New Trees

There are two new trees in the garden! See if you can spot them from the Roof Top Terrace. 



The new Shropshire Damson Tree




The new Apple tree



Sweet Smelling Peas

 The sunshine has done wonders for the flowers in the CMV garden including our sweetpeas! Volunteers have been harvesting them and using them to brighten up the tearoom and provide a delicious fragrance.



FTV Kate with a beautiful bouquet





Garden maintenance

With the sun finally shining, everything in the garden has burst into life. This includes nettles and grasses which if left to their own devices will shade out the wild flowers in the garden. Volunteer John Worrel spent Friday strimming the garden (avoiding the lovely wild flowers) to slow down the rapid growth of the weeds.



Red Campion which now should have enough light to continue to flourish.

A very colourful garden

Now Spring has finally sprung the garden is bursting with life and colour! It is filled with tonnes of beautiful flowers and today being a gloriously sunny day seemed like a great day to photograph them. You can see many of the flowers from the rooftop terrace.



A sea of lovely orange and yellow poppies

Close up of an orange poppy

Germander Speedwell, covering a large patch in the garden.

Herb Robert, The delicate petals look like they are shimmering in the light.

Red campion, is a common roadside flower and the flowers are a stunning pink.

Tidying up the garden

Our volunteer John Worrell has been busy in the garden, planting things such as Laurel and Rosemary into pots to sit in the beds.

Activity in the Garden

These are some of the latest camera trap videos from the garden captured by our full time volunteer, Kate. Theres a lovely clip of a fox checking out the camera and one of our regular visitors, a badger rooting around in the undergrowth.

A Sea of Snowdrops

The Carding Mill valley garden is filled with a beautiful sea of Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis). They are a sign that Spring is on its way and hopefully some bright sunny days! Snowdrops are rated as 'Near threatened' by the International Union for Conservation of Nature so it is lovely to see them flourish in our garden.



Photos taken by FTV Kate Price



Garden Update

Over the past few weeks FTV's and volunteers have been working hard in the garden. New steps and paths have been put in to make access safer and the old plastic compost bins have been replaced with recycled pallets. The paths were dug out and pinned with wood lengths and stakes. They then had carpet laid down and Bracken compost spread on top.

Lucy working on the new compost bins.



Dr John, finishing the path running through the garden.



Tom cutting lengths to create new steps.

Garden Clearance

Over the past few weeks the full time volunteers Kate and Tom and TTF volunteers John Giles and John Worrell have been clearing the kitchen garden. They removed some of the mature trees to let light in and the bramble. Yesterday they made a big bonfire on site to get rid of all the brash.

John Giles reducing a stump with the chainsaw.





Dr John and Tom with the fire.

Preparing the Garden for Winter

Lucy, one of our volunteers began preparing the garden for winter yesterday, she planted Lettuces in the greenhouse beds and put manure in the beds outside. Nick the assistant ranger also reduced a Wych Elm tree in the garden.



Lucy planting Lettuce plants





Kitchen Garden

Productivity is still slow in the kitchen garden, although berries are beginning to be picked from the fruit cage. Pictured above is our regular volunteer, Les, with the fruits of our labour.

Kitchen Garden Update

Produce from the kitchen garden is beginning to be picked. Nick picked the first bowl of lettuce for the Tea Room on Friday, but productivity has been slow due to the rain and slugs.

Kitchen Garden

The kitchen garden is well underway now, with the beds planted up with various fruit and veg including runner beans, strawberries and radishes. Tomatoes are growing in the greenhouse and the berries in the cage are coming to fruition. Watering has been a daily job, and the area has been brushcut to make it look more presentable.

Produce from the Kitchen Garden.

Over the last couple of months the Tea room in Carding Mill Valley has been using the produce from the Kitchen Garden in the freshly made sandwiches, salads and soups. Beetroot cake was very popular as well as the strawberrys that topped the meringue. The tomatoes, onions and runner beans will be ready shortly and will all be used in the tea room rescipes.

 

CMV Kitchen Garden

The Carding Mill Valley Kitchen Garden is virtually ready.

On Thursday the glass in the new greenhouse was finished and both greenhouses had small raised beds installed, ready for the tomato and cucumber plants to be planted in culture rings.

The raised beds were planted and the netting was upgraded using some old gas pipe to support the nets.

Rhubarb (left) has already featured on the T-room menu. 

In the raised beds we have:

Onion sets

Carrots

Radish

Beetroot

Broad Beans

Spring Onions

Red Onions

And soon to be Runner Beans.

Kitchen Garden Project at Dudmaston Hall

Part 3

On Tuesday some of the TTF went across to Dudmaston again to continue work on the Kitchen Garden.

With all the hardcore on the pathways compacted and the raised beds full, it was time for the finishing touches.

This time we were greeted with another pile of stone. A limestone gravel to form a finishing cover for the path ways.

The stone was again loaded into wheel barrows and then transported into the garden to be raked into place before being compacted.

Carding Mill Valley Kitchen Garden Project

Now that signes of spring are starting to appear it is nearly time to start planning what goes into the garden.

Before this though a second greenhouse is going to be installed.

Kindly donated by a local farmer the greenhouse will increase the amount of produce, like tomatoes and peppers the tea-room can use.

Again the Tuesday Task Force volunteers played a huge part in preparing the ground for the new structure, digging away at the bank to make a level surface to lay foundations on.

The soil that was removed was carried in buckets and used to fill up the newest of the seven raised beds.      

                                                                

Kitchen Garden Project at Dudmaston Hall

Another group of volunteers from the Tuesday Task Force and the Ranger team went across to Dudmaston hall to continue work on the new Kitchen Garden.

It had changed a lot since we had last seen it but there was still work to be done.

We were tasked with putting down a layer of hardcore to make stable pathways between the raised beds

A 16 tonne pile was transferred into wheelbarrows then transported into the garden to be compacted down.

This left time for a short walk around the grounds before lunch.

After a brief rest the second pile of hardcore was delivered, 20 tonne this time.

Kitchen Garden project at Dudmaston Hall

The Kitchen Garden project started at Dudmaston Hall (near Bridgenorth in Shropshire) in early November. To help out, a group of volunteers from the tuesday task force, Nick and myself travelled across to help the gardeners at Dudmaston in making the ground ready for the garden.
This involved a lot of scrub clearence and the removal of a pond.Where possible materials like stone and bamboo that were removed were kept to be reused later, otherwise most of the green waste was put in a skip.

A delicious beef stew was provided to feed the workers and when the work was done a short walk around the gardens.