The Garden at The Belvedere Centre

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One of my current projects is to revamp the garden at The Belvedere Centre, our local community centre in Norwich.

There are borders in front of the community centre and a delightful gated, wooded garden at the back. But both have been neglected for a number of years and need quite a lot of work.

Last August, with a team of enthusiastic volunteers, we cleared brambles, privet and sycamore seedlings from part of the back garden.

In October Vanna and I planted perennials and shrubs in the borders by the car park at the front of The Belvedere Centre.

Another part of the renovation was to do some tree work, with the blessing of Norwich City Council tree officers, to remove congested branches and fell a couple of rather spindly trees from a row of five Snakebark Maples. This work took place between October and January and the garden already looks much better. We’ve used some of the logs to create habitat piles here and in the Grapes Hill Community Garden.

We’ve drawn up a planting plan for the back garden and will do more clearing then planting during the next three months, so that we should hopefully have a much improved garden by the time summer comes.

Read the next update about the garden.

Belvedere - before clearance

Before clearance, September 2011

After clearance

After clearance, November 2011

Planting shrubs

Planting shrubs at front of Centre, October 2011

Tree surgery

Tree surgery, January 2012

Witch Hazel, Hamamelis

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Hamamelis x intermedia 'Pallida'

Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Pallida’

The Witch Hazel in the Grapes Hill Community Garden, Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Pallida’ (a.k.a. Hamamelis mollis ‘Pallida’) is in flower at the moment, providing some delicate winter colour with its yellow flowers. We only planted it last March but it was in flower when we bought it and it will eventually grow up to 4 metres in height and width, if the ash trees allow it.

It’s hardy and doesn’t mind partial shade, so is a useful plant to grow. The flowers are fragrant, though you sometimes need to warm them up by breathing on them if you want to catch the scent.

There are several other species of Hamamelis and even a nursery in Kent that specialises in them, though we bought ours at Mousehold Garden Centre in Norwich.

Witch Hazel is useful medicinally. Extracts from the bark and leaves are used to make soothing eye drops. I can vouch for these but, thankfully, not for Witch Hazel’s use in the treatment of hemorrhoids or post-natal tearing of the perineum.

Pea Shoots

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Pea Shoots

Pea Shoots

Although I grow lots of salads on my allotment I like to have some standby salad ingredients at home.

In the autumn, winter and spring I grow various salad leaves in my unheated greenhouse.

These salads include pea shoots, grown from a bag of  marrowfat peas from a wholefood shop (such as Norwich’s Rainbow Wholefoods). Bags of marrowfat peas are cheap and one bag will give you lots of shoots, so the main expense of growing your own is compost.

Pea shoots taste lovely on their own (like fresh peas) and combine well with other salad leaves. Harvest them just before you eat them because they wilt quickly once picked.

Grow pea shoots as follows:

  1. Go to a wholefood shop and buy a large packet of marrowfat peas.
  2. Plant the seeds in a pot or seed tray of damp, seedling or general purpose peat-free compost, sowing thickly. Cover with half an inch of compost.
  3. Wait until the pea shoots have grown their first sets of leaves and tendrils, then snip off the tender shoots.
  4. Repeat step 3 several times, to get more than one crop. Keep the peas well watered and in a fairly cool place. I stop growing them in summer when there are lots of other things to eat and my greenhouse is too hot (and full of tomato and pepper plants).
  5. Keep sowing for a continuous supply of pea shoots.

See this excellent post on growing pea shoots. The peashoots.com website has a whole host of recipes for pea shoots.