9:00am Friday 27th March 2009
By Botanic Belle
I know, you expected news of spring bulbs and magnolia flowers! But its not every day you welcome a larger than life penguin into the Garden.
Peter Penguin is the reduce, re-use and recycle champion from the Midcounties Co-op who has been helping school children in the surrounding counties find out how to protect the planet. He helped a group of 4 year olds from Brookside School in Bicester find out about the 3 Rs whilst on a visit to the Garden.
Enough about penguins, even if it does feels cold enough for them… Spring has sprung, bulbs are flowering, magnolia petals are fluttering as we speak. The beautiful sunny start to March this year that encouraged the magnolia to flower is now turning its petals into pretty confetti as they are blown from the tree! There may still be some left to see this weekend, but don’t leave it too long.
As always it’s a busy time of year here for both gardeners and plants. The snowdrops are over for another year, but they have been replaced with other equally cheerful flowers. Several trees have been planted all around with the bright blue Scilla sibirica, also known as Siberian Squill (it looks a bit like a very small bluebell and they are in the same hyacinth plant family but it has a much more intense blue colour). Also appearing in clumps around trees are dwarf daffodils and bright tulips. We went out with a group of primary school children this week to see how many colours they could find in the Garden, they were surprised at how colourful it was at this time of year. Not just colourful, but sweet smelling as well. The Azara microphyla, known as Chin-chin in its native Chile is flowering. Its not much to look at, but it smells EXACTLY like a warm bar of white chocolate – milkybar to be precise. Its smell is enough to wake up the most drowsy of pollinators. You can catch wafts of it as it blows across the Garden, but it is actually planted in the little Rose Lane Garden, behind the Garden wall, along with the monkey puzzles.
So that’s what the plants are doing, now let me tell you about what the gardeners are up to. The Horticultural team have started a monumental project to enlarge our vegetable beds and turn them from 4 beautiful petite plots into 4 mammoth production plots, each bed is now 4 X 40 meters! The idea is to give people a sense of what they can grow through the year and give groups and schools visiting the chance to get really hands on and sow seed in the Botanic Garden, gaining some practical gardening skills. So far we have sown peas and sugar snaps with pupils from SS Philip & James and next week we will probably be getting our potatoes in with the help of pupils at Hagbourne Primary.
As a keen allotmenter (of about 8 months!) I’m really excited about how we can help people get skills and confidence to grow their own food, no matter what their surroundings and challenges are. Although according to a survey done by B&Q about 26% of people questioned were growing some of their own food, and another 10% were hoping to start. So inspiration and a bit of hands on fun might help the others get involved as well!
Just to mention that there are lots of other exciting things coming up in the Garden. I’ll try and give you a flavour of what’s looking good, and also what’s happening behind the scenes as well. More next time about Tom, Ali & Clare’s visit to Great Dixter to see the late Christopher Lloyd’s garden and to meet up with head gardener, Fergus Garrett.
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