The Garden At The Belvedere Centre (4)

Posted on 15 May, 2012 by

On today’s task at The Belvedere Centre we had a change from rain, as the showers were of hail. In spite of this we managed to finish off the path edges, plant a few more perennials and weed out the many Green Alkanet seedlings that are appearing in the flower beds.

Although some leggier growth has been damaged by heavy rain, most plants are settling in well and we’ve received plenty of praise for what we’ve done so far.

We need to finish off the planting in the centre of the garden and then put down a layer of permeable membrane on the paths and cover it with slate chippings. After that we’ll need to level up some of the slabs and do a bit more weeding, as well as putting down slabs for a barbecue area.

Thanks once again to those who have helped, by hard physical work, supplying cups of tea or giving us plants. We have made a lot of progress since I last wrote about the garden on 24th April.

Using a mattock to remove roots

Using a mattock to remove roots

Putting in bed edging

Putting in bed edging

Shade Border

Shade Border

Bed edges in place

The wooden bed edges are in place

Weeding

Weeding

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Spring harvest from the allotment

Posted on 12 May, 2012 by

We’ve just been to the allotment to put up frames for Runner beans and Climbing French Beans. I’ll sow the seed sometime next week, now that the weather is becoming warmer.

Seed germination has been very slow in the cold, wet weather and weeds are mostly growing faster than the seedlings.

Radishes

A fine harvest of radishes

The success story so far this spring has been Parsnip seedlings, which I planted in late February and March in mild, sunny weather, and the Radishes I sowed at the same time to mark the rows. The Radishes are ready now, all at once, and have been the feature of most of our recent meals (see recipes). In dry springs the roots are riddled with the tunnels of Cabbage Root Fly larvae but this spring the rain has deterred this pest and the radish roots are of almost showbench quality and, with all the water, large and tender.

Winter Purslane, like the radishes, has appreciated the rain. Its lush leaves and little white flowers are a welcome source of salad greens. I planted just a few seeds several years ago and have had this plant in abundance every spring since then. I dig in the excess as a green manure but some always self seeds.

With the cold weather, Asparagus has been very late and is still growing rather slowly, though what we are picking tastes as delicious as ever (see recipes). (Last year, when it was hot and dry, we had Asparagus from late March onwards; this year we started cropping last week.)

Finally, we are almost at the end of the Purple-sprouting and White-sprouting Broccoli. The plants are in the ground for a long time but they’re well worth growing for their delicious young flower shoots.

Asparagus

Asparagus

Winter Purslane

Winter Purslane (a.k.a. Miners' Lettuce)

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Wild Garlic, Allium ursinum

Posted on 5 May, 2012 by
Wild Garlic

Wild Garlic, Allium ursinum

One of my favourite sights and smells of early May is Wild Garlic or Ramsons, Allium ursinum. Like Garlic Chives, this plant is both beautiful and edible, but it is also a common British wild flower. It is flowering at the moment in woodlands across the country, and in my back garden, where I introduced it several years ago.

Wild Garlic thrives in damp shade in deciduous woodland and often forms dense stands of wide green leaves, followed by groups of white flowers borne on stalks. The leaves resemble those of Lily of the Valley, Convallaria majalis, which are poisonous, but the strong garlic smell of Wild Garlic leaves is a giveaway. The smell gets stronger towards the end of May as the plants wilt and start to die down. By midsummer no leaves are visible and the Wild Garlic goes dormant again until the following spring.

If you grow Wild Garlic it will gradually spread if it likes where you’ve planted it and its black seeds will drop fairly close to the parent plant.

Wild Garlic is very pretty, especially en masse, but it is a great edible plant to grow as well. You can eat the bulbs if you grow it yourself or have the land owner’s permission, otherwise it is illegal to uproot it.

I often put a couple of leaves in a cheese sandwich but there are more sophisticated ways of eating it, such as these recipes on the BBC Food website and on the Guardian’s Word Of Mouth Blog. Wild Garlic is poisonous to dogs. According to Wikipedia, cows fed on Wild Garlic have milk that tastes slightly of garlic, and butter made from this milk was very popular in 19th century Switzerland. Wild Garlic is known as Baerlauch (Bear’s Garlic) in German because it was a popular spring food for Brown Bears. So, if you go down to the woods today…

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The Plantation Garden and Cathedral Garden

Posted on 29 April, 2012 by
The Plantation Garden

The Plantation Garden

Yesterday afternoon was cold and damp and not the sunny afternoon I had imagined several months ago when I arranged a tour of The Plantation Garden and the Cathedral Garden at St. John’s RC Cathedral  for members of the Grapes Hill Community Garden Group.

But we had a great time. The Plantation Garden was lush and green after all the rain. Its formal beds were at their spring best, including a round one with pink tulips contrasting with blue forget-me-nots. On the banks there were the soft greens of ferns and wild garlic and the darker foliage of ivy and various shrubs. The white flowers of comfrey shone in the gloom and there were delightful details like a grassy bank of wild strawberries with Muscari (grape hyacinths).

The Plantation Garden - the fountain

The Plantation Garden - the fountain

The Plantation Garden was designed and built over a period of forty years by Henry Trevor, a prosperous Victorian upholsterer and cabinet maker, who lived in a large house adjoining the land, which was formerly a chalk quarry. He built terraces, a palm house, a rustic bridge and a fountain.

By the late twentieth century the garden was very overgrown but since 1980 The Plantation Garden Preservation Trust has restored the garden to its present state. It is now one of Norwich’s special attractions, especially on a sunny Sunday afternoon in summer, when visitors can enjoy tea and cake in the garden.

We continued on to St. John’s Roman Catholic Cathedral and were given a tour of the Cathedral Garden, which is maintained by Head Gardener Zanna Foley-Davies and a team of volunteers.

The garden at The Narthex

The garden at The Narthex

Zanna showed us around and we looked at photographs from three years ago, when the garden was overgrown and full of rubbish. Zanna has carefully transformed the garden into an asset for the community, with flowers, shrubs, fruit and space for people to meet. The apple trees and memorial rose garden have been rescued with careful pruning and maintenance and Zanna now plans to create a community vegetable garden in part of the area.

Finally we finished our afternoon with tea and cakes in The Narthex. Thanks to our guides at both gardens and the catering staff at The Narthex for such a warm welcome and an enjoyable afternoon.

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Wood Spurge, Euphorbia amygdaloides

Posted on 25 April, 2012 by

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Caper Spurge, Euphorbia lathyris. But my favourite spurge (Euphorbia) has to be the Wood Spurge, Euphorbia amygdaloides.

Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae

Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae (with plum blossom and a carpet of Black Peppermint) in Grapes Hill Community Garden.

The Wood Spurge is a lovely, tough and adaptable garden plant that will grow in dry shade and also a British native, where it grows in woodlands especially in the south of England and Wales (see map). The plant spreads by underground runners and eventually the evergreen leaves will form a low weed-smothering carpet over the ground.

It is looking lovely at the moment in Grapes Hill Community Garden and in our back garden and we have just planted it at The Belvedere Centre. The lime green bracts almost glow in a dark, shady spot or on a dull day, and they will continue to provide interest until early summer.

The usual garden form is Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae, also known as Mrs Robb’s Bonnet. Thanks to Richard Mabey’s superb “Flora Britannica” (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1996) I know that Mrs Mary Anne Robb was a Victorian adventurer, who discovered this form of Wood Spurge while attending a wedding in Istanbul in 1891. The resourceful woman put the specimen in her hat box to transport it home. Her great-grandson, Alastair Robb, and his wife are now renovating the garden at Cothay Manor in Somerset, where they live.

There is also an attracive form of the plant with purple foliage, Euphorbia amygdaloides var. ‘Purpurea’.

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The Garden At The Belvedere Centre (3)

Posted on 24 April, 2012 by

Since my last update on our work on the garden at The Belvedere Centre (3 April 2012) we have had lots of rain, which has watered in everything we’ve planted.

By a combination of avoiding some of the showers and putting up with getting wet, we’ve done more weeding and tidying and have planted up more of the garden.

The shady border and sunny border are now complete. We’ve added more ferns and other shade loving plants to the shady border (including Epimedium x versicolor “Sulphureum”, Epimedium x warleyense and Beesia calthifolia from Harveys Garden Plants) and mulched the bed with well rotted bark to create as near to a woodland floor as we can.

Shady border, looking west

Shady border, looking west

Western border, looking north.

Western border, looking north.

 

We’ve done work on the western border, filling gaps between existing shrubs with hardy perennials that were given to us as a donation, and a couple of shrubs: Ribes sanguineum “King Edward VII” (Flowering Currant) and Amelanchier canadensis. Both will have pretty spring flowers and the Amelanchier will provide edible fruit and lovely autumn leaf colour. And now to the centre of the garden. This requires some landscaping work but we’ve made a start by weeding and marking out the line of the paths through the centre of the garden.

Weeding the centre of the garden

Weeding the centre of the garden

Weeding the centre and western border

Weeding the centre and western border

Centre of the garden - path marked out

Centre of the garden - path marked out

Tulips in the car park

Tulips in the car park

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Red Dead-nettle, Lamium purpureum

Posted on 13 April, 2012 by
Red Dead-nettle

Red Dead-nettle - on the allotment

It is spring and Red Dead-nettles (Lamium purpureum) are nearly everywhere – in gardens, in cracks in the pavement and on the allotment. In a mild spring these pretty flowers can start appearing as early as February and they can continue throughout the spring and summer and into autumn.

To many the Red Dead-nettle (also known as Purple Dead-nettle, Badman, Badman’s Posies, Sweet Archangel or Red Archangel) is a rampant weed and it is certainly good at seeding and producing more of its kind on newly weeded soil and other bare ground. It can also carry cucumber mosaic virus and potato leaf-roll virus. A single plant can produce between one and four thousand seeds and evidence of Red Dead-nettle has been found in Bronze Age deposits, so it probably came to Britain with early agriculture, along with other weeds. It has since spread to North America, where it is listed as an invasive species in some areas.

But Red Dead-nettle flowers are very popular with bumblebees when few other flowers are about so I always allow a few plants to grow on the allotment. I find that on my dry, sandy soil Red Dead-nettles don’t cause much trouble as they can be pulled or hoed out very easily and they are never a nuisance. From May onwards a crop of different summer weeds take over and cause far more trouble: Fat Hen, Lesser Bindweed, Gallant Soldier, sowthistles, to name but a few.

Red Dead-nettles in Earlham Cemetery

Red Dead-nettles in Earlham Cemetery, Norwich

Red dead-nettle is a member of family Lamiaceae, which includes sage, mint, thyme and other useful kitchen herbs. It is also edible and is a pleasant addition to spring salads – use the leaves and flowering tops. The leaves can also be steamed, perhaps with some butter added at the end of cooking. Other recipes include bacon and deadnettle strata and springtime fritters.  I sometimes just nibble some leaves when I’m gardening. Red Dead-nettle is also used in herbal medicine for its possible anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties, or for treating wounds.

See the Wildflower Finder website for some lovely photos of Red Dead-nettle, much better than the ones on this page.

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Caper Spurge, Euphorbia lathyris

Posted on 9 April, 2012 by

When Grapes Hill Community Garden was built the tarmac that originally covered the site was removed and soil was brought in by truck from a depot on the edge of Mousehold Heath in Norwich. Originally, the soil came from the war memorial site outside Norwich’s City Hall.

With the soil came plants, in the form of roots (Hedge Bindweed, Calystegia sepium, which we fortunately removed in late winter 2011) and seeds. The latter included lots of commoner weeds but also some more interesting exotics, such as Milk Thistle (Silybum marianum), Shoo-Fly Plant (Nicandra physalodes) and Caper Spurge (Euphorbia lathyrsis).

Caper Spurge, Euphorbia lathyris

Caper Spurge, Euphorbia lathyris, in Grapes Hill Community Garden

I knew that the bold, upright plant with its rigidly arranged leaves with their white midribs was a spurge (Euphorbia) but it was only recently that I confirmed that it was Caper Spurge (Euphorbia lathyris). It is now starting to flower and, as it is a biennial this will be its last year in the garden. We have option of letting it seed but will probably remove it before then to prevent the garden becoming a forest of its seedlings. The seeds (which look like capers but are very poisonous) are released explosively and are also dispersed by ants (reference). We will need to be careful when removing it, as the toxic, milky sap can cause skin irritation and even serious injury if splashed in the eyes.

Caper Spurge is also known as Mole Plant because it allegedly deters moles where it is planted. Another name is Petroleum Plant because it contains high levels of hydrocarbons, and it has been suggested that it could be used as a petrol substitute if enough of the plant was grown.

Medicinally, Caper Spurge was sometimes used as a violent purgative. Beggars sometimes used the leaves to create unsightly skin sores, which would cause passers by to give them more money out of pity. The excellent Plants For A Future Database lists other uses as well, including the treatment of tumours and snake bites.

There are some good pictures of the plant on the Virginia Tech Weed Identification Guide website if you need to identify it. The plant is classed as a naturalised alien in the UK, on roadsides, waste tips and old gardens as well as in open woodland (view UK distribution map). It is sometimes grown in gardens as well.

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Thankfully, some rain…

Posted on 4 April, 2012 by

I do enjoy sunny days but East Anglia has been experiencing a drought since last summer, with an exceptionally dry and warm spring in 2011 followed by a dry autumn and winter and recent weeks of sunshine, warmth and little rain.

So I was very pleased when it started raining yesterday afternoon, just after we finished planting in The Belvedere Centre’s garden.The rain will water in our plants and play a (sadly, small) part in replenishing reservoirs.

Some shoppers in the centre of Norwich this morning were complaining about the wet weather and wishing for sunshine. It is sad to see how out of touch many people are with the natural world. They will be the first to complain when food prices rise due to failed harvests.

The hosepipe ban starts tomorrow and is likely to last all summer, as even with plenty of rain it will take some time for reservoirs to fill up.

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The Garden At The Belvedere Centre (2)

Posted on 3 April, 2012 by

Since the last piece I wrote about the Belvedere Centre (22 January 2012) we have done a lot of work. First of all we built a wire mesh leafmould bin and cleared up the fallen leaves from the garden. Then we spent several days weeding the shady southern border and the west facing sunny border, taking out old tree roots in the process.

We bought some shrubs for the shady border – Fatsia japonica and Aucuba japonica. These both have decorative foliage and will tolerate quite dense shade. We also added a few Aubretia and variegated thyme plants to the front of the sunny border. Within minutes of planting a Bee-fly found the Aubretia flowers and a week later the flowers are proving popular with bumblebees.

Then it was time to order a large batch of hardy perennials from Howard Nurseries of Wortham, which we’ve planted in the last couple of days. The plants were delivered yesterday lunchtime and Vanna and I dealt with most of the bare-rooted plants yesterday afternoon. Then today ten of us planted the rest of the batch and by the end of the two days we’d planted and watered in over 400 plants.

Luckily the soil has quite a lot of clay in it so we should only need to water once a week, or less if we get some decent rain. With a hosepipe ban and no outside tap anyway, we need to do all the watering with watering cans, which is a slow process.

Our work has been accompanied by a Robin and a pair of Blue Tits, both nesting in or near the garden. The Belvedere Centre staff, busy as ever, have helped us with the gardening and supplied us with tea, biscuits and cake and filled up cans of water for us.

Next we need to work on the centre of the garden and on the western border, but for now we can be pleased with what we’ve done and look forward to seeing our plants begin to flower.

Weeding the west-facing border

Weeding the west-facing border

Perennials ready to plant

Perennials ready to plant

Planting perennials

Planting perennials

Planting perennials

Planting perennials

Preparing the shady border for more planting

Preparing the shady border for more planting

Planting in the shady border

Planting in the shady border

List of perennials planted in last two days:

Achillea ‘Moonshine’
Agastache rugosa ‘Liquorice White’
Allium senescens glaucum
Anemone huphensis ‘Praecox’
Aquilegia ‘Red Star’
Asplenium scolopendrium Undulatum Group
Aster amellus ‘Rosa Erfullung’
Aster pyrenaeus ‘Lutetia’
Aster x frikartii
Bergenia ‘Bressingham Ruby’
Carex flagellifera
Coreopsis rosea ‘American Dream’
Coreopsis verticillata ‘Golden Gain’
Crocosmia spp.
Cynoglossum nervosum
Dryopteris erythrosora
Echinops sphaerocephalus ‘Arctic Glow’
Erigeron ‘Dignity’
Eryngium variifolium
Geranium macrorrhizum ‘Pindus’
Geranium phaeum ‘Album’
Geranium sanguineum striatum
Geranium wallichianum ‘Buxton’s Variety’
Geranium x oxonianum ‘Wageningen’
Helichrysum ‘Schwefellicht’
Hemerocallis ‘Little Red Hen’
Hemerocallis ‘Stella de Oro’
Heuchera sanguinea ‘White Cloud’
Heucherella alba ‘Rosalie’
Iris foetidissima
Knautia macedonica
Lamium maculatum ‘Album’
Lamium maculatum ‘Orchid Frost’
Lavandula angustifolia ‘Little Lady’
Leucanthemum x superbum ‘Snowcap’
Lychnis coronaria ‘Alba’
Macleaya microcarpa ‘Kelways Coral Plume’
Miscanthus sinensis ‘Silberfeder’
Monarda ‘Snow Queen’
Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’
Origanum vulgaris ‘Country Cream’
Persicaria affinis ‘Darjeeling Red’
Persicaria affinis ‘Donald Lowndes’
Persicaria amplexicaule ‘Rosea’
Phuopsis stylosa
Polystichum polyblepharum
Pulmonaria officinalis ‘Cambridge Blue Group’
Rhodiola rosea
Rudbeckia fulgida sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’
Salvia nemorosa ‘Ostfriesland’
Salvia x sylvestris ‘Mainacht’
Saxifraga umbrosa
Solidago ‘Ledsham’
Tellima grandiflora ‘Forest Frost’
Thalictrum isopyroides
Verbascum ‘Cotswold Queen’
Verbena bonariensis
Veronica longifolia ‘Blauer Sommer’
Waldsteinia geoides.

Entries in bold were planted in the shady border and / or centre of the garden. The rest were planted in the sunny border.

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