Garden Blog

There are many honey bees about the garden. In the hollyhocks, around the globe thistles and deep in the penstemons. Though, you often see a bee head into a flower and immediately back out and go to another. They have smelt an earlier bee in the first flower, and know that there will be little nectar left, and so don’t …

We had eight hours of rain on Friday. Most of it gentle, but heavy in patches. It was very welcome, after a dry week. The pond hardly looks any higher but our IBCs (big tanks) are fuller. And the rain was everywhere, all over the garden, which sounds a little obvious, but if you are dependent on watering cans, then …

It is cooler but mainly dry. Any rain we have had hardly soaks into the soil. The wildflower bed is sad, the flowers gasping, the stems languid. Drought rushes plants through their cycle as they are stressed, and must set seed before lack of water kills them. Our plants in pots dry out quickly, one of our apple trees, in …

Hot, dry weather and no sign of Thames Water. Will we see them this summer? They have to get borough permission to dig up the road. Is that in train? Well, expect no rush from them or the Council. How these things play out is always dispiriting, delay the watchword. Our standpipe, hardly comparable to the Elizabeth Line, which was …

Sauvages de ma rue, wild things in my road, or in our case: plants just outside the fence. They are in the little soil that slips out of the garden into the gap between the paving stones and the fence. We have sow thistle, hedge mustard, various grasses, white campion, purple toadflax, nettle and chickweed. The Sauvages de ma Rue …

The wildflower bed is a sea of red poppies; most have come out today as yesterday the scentless mayweed, that largish white daisy-like flower, held sway. Poppy flowers only last a few days, the petals easily detached in the wind. But they will keep coming for the next month of so, leaving behind their pepper pots of seeds. There are …

We have quite a number tadpoles in our pond that have not developed into froglets. They should have done so by the this time of year, having been released from the spawn in late March. I have noted this in previous years. There are always a few who remain tadpoles, but there are more this year. It may be because …

Forest Gate Community Garden Monday, 29 May 2023 The last half of May has been dry, after a very wet April and March. The garden is still green as the earlier rain has soaked into the soil, but another week or so and the plants in the soil will begin to suffer as those in pots and raised beds already …

Forest Gate Community Garden Sunday, 21 May 2023 The bright yellow pond irises are out, catch ’em quick, some are already fading. There’s a pond in Epping Forest called the Lost Pond. I used to go there with Woodcraft Folk over half term while they were camping at Debden, end of May. Usually the irises were out, a large swathe …