AtWaG - (All the World's a Garden)

The Learning garden - opened by Chris Packham

The excellent learning garden in Beaulieu was opened officially on Friday 20th June by local media champion of wildlife and conservation, Chris Packham. Thankfully, dignitaries were thin on the ground, the 'do' was for the people whose input transformed the concept into reality. Designers, builders, diggers, and planters, many of them volunteers were thanked most sincerely by Patrick Fairweather and it was a great relief to all that the rain held of.

In just a few months a sea of mud has been transformed into a fine example of a well managed, atrractive and highly productive garden. Julian, the gardener has worked wonders in getting rapid results from a heavy clay soil.

If you can, you should pay the garden a visit, you can find out  more from the Fairweathers web site

Why plants come to Garden Centres

  Why plants come to Garden Centres 
  Originally uploaded by AtWaG

Are you one of those people who doesn't really make a distinction between Nurseries and Garden Centres? If you are thinking of buying plants this spring (N hemisphere) and want to get value for money then it's worth getting the difference clear in your mind.

Plants go to Nurseries to grow - Plants go to Garden Centres to die.

The Nursery environment is optimised for plants. Nurseries can be uncomfortable places for people because every effort is made to ensure the plants there thrive. Nursery staff wear Oilskins, Chemical suits, Leggings, Aspirators, Heavy boots, Thick gloves and at the height of summer almost nothing! Nursery people 'suffer' for the sake of their plants.

The ten commandments

Wyevale Garden Centres have followed up their 'ban' on gas patio heaters with an environmental declaration they are referring to as the 'Ten commandments' These are part of a consultation document, titled People, Plants and the Planet,

• Encourage carbon positive gardening – by stocking products that make a positive contribution
• Ensuring our supply chain benefits everyone – wherever Wyevale products come from it wants to make sure everyone in the supply chain is better off
• Rediscover the local community – especially in decisions about employment, sourcing and investment
• Connecting with the source of our food – Fresh, seasonal food grown close to home has a low environment impact.  It would be even better if customers grow their own.

How to string Onions

Onions should be ripening now and if yours are its worth getting them dried as quickly as possible - they'll keep better.I lay mine on wire frames under cover where there is good air movement. This year we still had sound onions from last year when the new crop was ready.
Stringing Onions saves space, keeps them dry and they look great hanging in the kitchen.

The all important nifty loop around the string can be seen in detail. It's easy once you've done the first two or three!

I've got worms again!

20 years ago I had a wormery for my birthday, it was pretty basic but worked fine until the woven fabric it was made of succumbed to the influence of sunlight and perished. Things have come a long way since then, there are dozens of different designs of wormery on the market, some very sohpisticated, some rather heath-robinsonly constructed from waste packaging. How to choose? - I bought on ebay on the basis of highest rated supplier...that was Stoke Worms with a 100% record based on over 300 sales - impressive.

The worm tower arrived within four days of ordering complete with worm bed material, special food, separator gauze and best of all a DVD explaining how to set up the wormery. The DVD is both helpful and entertaining. Refreshingly the DVD is a homegrown, relaxed offering that is everything it needs to be without being pretentious. I especially enjoyed hearing the interjections of the camera operator when the presenter needed a prompt. After watching the video through just once I felt confident about setting things up properly and the process took about 30 minutes - the longest part being the wait while the Dendrobaena worms snuggled down into the worm bed prior to sprinkling in their special starter food.

I'm very pleased with my four tier wormery - it'll be interesting to see how quickly they settle in and start making vermicompost.

A stream to enhance your garden

Gardening is a natural activity to have software written to help with all that information, recording, and planning. I've seen a dozen or so titles over the past several years and tried them all. Most suffer from being written for the US market and getting half hearted UK treament, those are all dismal. The 'plants for a purpose' databases woefully limited, the pest and diseases sections pre-occupied with Groundhogs and Gophers and the garden design section only any use if your plot is square or rectangular on level ground!

There is one offering that stands head and shoulders above anything else out there and I'm pleased to say it's British through and through. Complete Gardens has been around for 6 years now so has matured into an extensive resource for gardeners. It's packed with quality information and high quality images - no surprise as Neil Bromhall (the MD)