Garden Blog

It feels like autumn in the garden. There’s lots of leaf fall and leaves on the sycamore and birch are yellowing. This is the effect of heat and drought. The trees are distressed. Getting rid of leaves helps alleviate water shortage, but it is at a cost as the early shutdown of photosynthesis means less stored sugar going into next …

The weather has been hot and dry for many weeks. July was the driest month on record in the UK, and August continues that way. The garden is suffering. Last Friday, I spent much of my time pulling up dead plants and throwing them on the compost heap. As the drought has gone on and on, I have been surprised …

It’s been a busy period in the garden this month. There was Forest Gate Festival at the beginning of the month, which split us in two. We were one of the 120 stalls on Osborne Road, and also kept the garden open on the same day. Last week, we had our Summer Celebration with musician Miri and her feminist blues …

The pond is low, a foot lower than it was in spring. The hot, dry weather is drying it out rapidly. The underwater plants, hornwort and elodea, are crowding the pond, their fronds and runners weaving all through it, growing in the hot weather but with less room for expansion in the falling water level. In our book, Summertime, published …

These are busy summer days, making up for the listless covid days of the last couple of years. The Garden organised the Forest Gate garden trail last weekend, when 18 gardens around the area opened up for visitors. The week before, we’d had a preview morning for the gardeners so they could at least see some of the other gardens, …

The elder (Sambucus nigra) is in bloom, a white umbrella of tiny flowers, hundreds on our tree. Last week in the countryside I saw many of them in bloom in the hedgerows. One of those trees not too sure whether it is a hedge or a tree. Ours is a tree but quite an untidy one with not much of …

I water the herbs on the sleepers and in the square raised bed, though we have had a fair bit of rain this week and our tubs are filling. But one mustn’t get complacent, a hot fortnight and we’ll need every drop. It rained all morning through, and brought out the snails. I inadvertantly crushed a couple on our paths. …

The mystery chewers? Thursday last week, I came into the garden and found four leaflets we had put up had been attacked, up to a third of each chewed away. I replaced them with pristine leaflets. Three days later these were as bad. I suspected snails, but didn’t know they attacked paper. Then we found one in situ. Obviously, they …

We had a bumper crowd for our Spring Celebration on Saturday, over 200 attendees eager to be out and meeting again after a depressing couple of years. We had music from The Smoke Remains with Paul M. Jones guitar/vocals, and Paul Romane harmonica/vocals. Then the Dog Jammers who had more than a dozen performers with an impressive set lasting around …

Both cherry trees are in bloom, the large pink blossoms merging with the white of the smaller tree. Theirs will be a brief show, but let’s enjoy them on these sunny Easter days. More than half of the new fence has been put in. At the front, there’s a new gate, with the fence stretching along Earlham to the corner …