A show, but no showers
My oh my, a busy old month it was in April. Drier days made plant care tougher, but abundantly colourful, dreamy days lay ahead.
Colour bursting everywhere
April is supposed to bring showers, but as we’ve all seen, the Spring has been unseasonably dry so far. Nevertheless, the wildflowers were showing up in abundance across the garden, visitors delighting in their showy rainbow of colours everywhere.
California poppies, a gorgeous deep orange to neon yellow flush of colour spread across the meadow, contrasting against the well-established blue borage. Self-seeded sedums in deep red hues attracted the busy bees, Herb Robert looking pretty and delicate peeping out from the nooks and crannies. And even the tulips carried on with their mixed hues of coral, purple and pink.
Green means go
The community garden volunteers had their hands full (and dirty) as the digging, planting, watering and mulching jobs mounted up.
We dug in a new crop this year, Chinese artichokes, which looked rather like juicy grubs. Tomato seedlings were transferred to their own pots, chillies were tended to gently, and vigourous baby gooseberries were split and repotted to be moved elsewhere.
We always think we have enough small size pots, but still get surprised every time with the number needed at this time of year!
Sweet sweet storage, and other stories
A long awaited project happened in April; the rebirth of our garden tool shed(s)! With a little to-ing and fro-ing, we reconfigured our storage space to enable us to house and protect our tools from the elements a little better.
We repurposed two pallets to make standing storage of our larger tools, and organised our hand tools on shelves for easy access. We’ll be looking into the best way to hang some items up safely too, and perhaps even some kind of simple light source for the duller days.
Further up the garden, Jenny added chalkboard paint to the meadow-side planters, so that we may label their contents (always a bit tricky to know if you weren’t the one planting them).
The bug mansion (that shall from now on be affectionately called “Bugingham Palace“) received some paint to its roof too, and our a-frames and other signage boards got a satisfying refresh.
Everything done had greater accessibility and communication in mind, and so far we’ve been very happy with the results. Not a bad morning’s work!
Spotted! 🐞
All our tiniest critters were having a literal field day during April. Some of the garden friends we spotted were:
Native ladybirds - in the meadow, and chasing aphids on the brassicas
Cranefly - sheltering from the wind on spear-leaved crocosmia
Garden Tiger Moth caterpillar - trundling across weed-suppressing cardboard in the beds
Ground Beetle - beautiful green iridescence, bolting through the compost
Cabbage White butterflies - flitting through the wildflower meadow
Black Clock Beetle - another happy and skittish compost dweller
New midweek gardening club!
We’ve been asked quite often whether the garden could be opened at any additional times of the week, as well as our usual Gardening Club on Saturdays. We’ve always loved having anyone pop in to, and make use of, the garden whenever they like so that the space can be loved by as many visitors as possible. But perhaps a midweek Gardening Club would be welcome?
After some public polling, the results were in; our most sought-after session midweek would cater to the after-work crew, the pre-and post-dinner folks. So, in April, we started our Midweek Gardening Club!
Every Wednesday from 4pm-7pm, you can now come to the garden for our general opening, get involved with our gardening tasks, or just pop in for a visit to wind down after a long day. We’ll be here, showing the garden space even more love.