Not so many entries for this section but still lovely.
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Here are the entries for best view of garden, a few have sent montage pictures so they have been included here. Again Vote for your favourite. Once again thank you for all the lovely photographs in this section. We have some very talented gardeners in the area. Please use the survey above to vote for your favourite photo in this section. Again no names, just beautiful pictures. Thank you to everyone who has sent us their lovely photographs. This section is for best flowers. We have not put people's names on the slideshow, because we want people to vote for their favourite photos, not because it is their friend's photograph. The voting section is above; please only vote for one photograph in each section. .We are going to hold a mid-summer virtual garden competition- just for fun.
Open to anyone who lives in Warwickshire or Coventry. We are asking people to submit photos or even short video clips to the following email address: [email protected] Please do this by 14th June. This will give us a chance to put together a slideshow to be on the page and website for mid-summer week, (20th June to 28th). Please don't give us your full address, just a location. Get your friends and family to vote. We would also welcome any little stories about you & your garden. The photographs need to have been taken during the lockdown period, so from mid March. The categories are: * Best individual flower, shrub or tree * Best window box or pot * Best hanging basket * Best children's plot (please don't include a photo of your child unless you are happy for them to be on the pages - please state in your email that you are happy for this) * Best looking Vegetable plot * Best garden view * Best picture of insect on flowers * Wildlife in your garden * 1st time gardener's plot * Best short video tour of your garden Gardening is one of those activities that is beneficial to our physical, emotional and social well-being. Sowing seeds, or taking cuttings is a great show of hope for the future. Flowers, shrubs & trees provide us with something beautiful to look at, smell and even touch. They can protect us from surrounding noises to a certain degree. Plants provide shade, and help in the drainage of land during wet seasons. They are know to help reduce pollution, hedges in particular will have a positive impact. Growing fruit and vegetables provides us with food, with no air miles and very little in the way of carbon footprint. Very few gardens are large enough to allow us to be totally self-sufficient, but what you grow to eat will be much better in taste than anything you can buy in the shops. Gardening is a well used tool for helping people through difficult times, unfortunately at the moment all those brilliant therapeutic gardening projects are closed. There is however, a huge online community of gardeners. An article in the RHS April, Garden magazine likens gardening to getting a daily does of Vitamin G (green). The article talks of studies that have shown that having time outside on a daily basis can be beneficial to treating high blood pressure and depression. At this difficult time more people are turning to gardening, even if all you have is space for some pots on your windowsill, get stuck in; and when all this is over there may be a new generation of gardeners. Thanks to RHS Garden Magazine for this information. Continue doing the annual pruning of shrubs after flowering. Not too late to reinvigorate Hardy Perennials by lifting and dividing your congested clumps of hardy perennials. Hardening Off Plants. If you have grown tender plants from seed or cuttings you need to continue carefully harden them off by placing them outdoors or in a cold frame whilst keeping a watchful eye for any forecast of overnight frost. Prick out and pot up or directly plant out your seedlings. Now is the time to sow your legume seeds (peas, beans, etc) directly into the soil Stay on top of your weeding before they drop their many years worth of future seed and create many hours of future weeding. If this predominantly dry spell continues throughout May you need to be watering as much as your circumstances allow. Try keeping a simple note book or list of things that you might want to change or improve in your garden in future months or years. You will be surprised how many ideas you fleetingly have but won’t develop further without the aid of notes to come back to and reflect on later. Sit and take the time to think about how you might want to further improve your garden both this year and beyond ......and the answer isn’t ..........employing a gardener! Take care Paul and Jan Nature Notes
Solidarity bee and bumble bee species have been busy finding suitable nesting sites in the grass. Singing Skylarks are around in reasonable numbers in fields around the village. A few Yellowhammers can occasionally be heard or seen. Unfortunately numbers of this bird have been very badly hit by the combination of changed farming practice and environmental factors. The first Blackcap was seen and heard singing on 10th April in the small nature reserve off Barnacle Lane – behind the allotments. This is an interesting small nature reserve which is worth a visit as part of your daily exercise. It has a good range of birds and butterflies, including Speckled Wood and Green Veined White. Many blackcaps now singing for all they are worth. The Moorhens first attempt at nesting in the middle of the pond’s just emerging bulrushes (red mace) seems to have failed – very likely predation of the eggs from an as yet unconcealed nest site. A few Swallows and a Whitethroat now seen. Still hoping to hear and see other spring migrants over the next month – Swifts, Martins, Garden and Willow warblers, and one of my favourites from mid May onward, the Hobby. We might also get the first migrant Red Admiral butterflies. April Highlights: The long tailed tits clutch of around 6-8 eggs hatched in mid April and are now probably a few days from fledging. By the end of March the usual range of hibernating butterflies had been seen in the garden: Comma, Peacock, Brimstone and Small Tortoiseshell. The first half of April saw the emergence of the first butterflies that overwinter in chrysalis (pupa) stage rather than as butterflies: Small White, Orange Tip and Holly Blue. A very good spring for butterflies so far, and especially the large numbers of Peacock, Tortoiseshell and Comma in the garden. In the pond the Newts egg laying continued, the first Pond Skaters and Water Boatmen insects appeared on the water surface, and we await the first dragonfly emergence. Pairs of Mallard are still visiting. The plums and damson trees have finished flowering and the fruit set looks good at this very early stage, and as always at this time of year, fingers are crossed for no damaging and crop reducing air frosts over the next month. The eight apple trees have probably had their best ever blossom year which peaked at the end of April. Rosa Lutea Banksiae has flowered for the first time since being planted nearly 3 years ago. A beautiful and very early pale yellow rose with numerous bunches of small florettes. This is an enormous (up to 30ft) species rose which really needs a wall to be trained along. It was a semi impulse buy whilst on holiday and against my better judgment (you know that feeling!) and with no wall available but with the self deceptive belief that I could find a solution somewhere and somehow once I got it home. Now it grows freely over, and is supported by, nearby shrubs and looks terrific, but what do I do next year and the one after that etc, when it rapidly grows well beyond its current 12 ft width! Will that impulse buy come back to bite me? .......who cares .......it’s a beauty! Our 50 metre length of Berberis Stenophylla hedge is coming to the end of its two/three weeks in bloom. This a terrific hedge if you only cut it once a year (after flowering) and don’t mind it looking a bit shaggy and unkempt for some of the year. The payoff is that we get a blaze of orange flower and terrific scent all down one side of the back garden, and the bees love it. It is also a secure boundary hedge and its tight knit growth habit makes it a popular site for long tailed tits nests. The last of the very late varieties of daffodils (small scented double flowers on multi-headed stems e.g. Cheerfulness) are still flowering at the end of April. Worth getting if you want to extend your Daffodil season and to be able to cut a strongly scented flower for indoors. Lots of us have runner beans crying to be planted out, you can gamble and plant out now but it is still quite possible that we will have a frost or two. If you’ve already planted out your beans be prepared to cover over with garden fleece, net curtains, newspaper or anything for the night. Don’t forget to uncover in the morning. Ideally the overnight temperatures outside need to be at least 8-10C before planting out runner and French beans. If like me your beans are romping away there are a few things you can do to keep them going until planted out. First you can pinch out the growing tips. Make sure that there is at least 2-3 pairs of adult leaves before you pinch the top off. This will delay the need to plant out by about a fortnight (hopefully). Secondly, pot on into a bigger pot & give them something to climb. When you plant out eventually you will have more mature plants that you just unwind & re-wind on the canes! so sacrifice a cane & cut it up for shorter lengths & few just got some kebab skewers & knitting needles! They transplant well even if a bit bigger. Some people recommend delaying sowing runner beans or French beans until 1st May, but us gardeners can be an impatient lot. |
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June 2020
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