Friday Gardening Group update

Posted:13 October 2013

Many of you may know that The Garden House was previously a market garden, and that when Bridgette and partner Graham bought it 12+ years ago it was completely overgrown and full of junk.  Since then it’s restoration into a working and inspirational garden has been a labour of love by Bridgette and Graham, and also over the past five or six years by the Friday Gardening Group.

By gathering a regular group of friends, students (Bridgette teaches horticulture at Stanmer College) and gardening beginners to help her maintain and develop this very large urban garden, Bridge has also created a nurturing, gardening, learning space.

Mosaic paving underway

The group continues to meet once a week in term time, gardening and learning with the seasons and almost as important, chatting and catching up over a Friday morning coffee!

One of the group Sharon Donnelly, has started a brilliant new blog tracking the weekly activities http://fridaygardeninggroup.blogspot.co.uk , and on the website we’re going to bring you the monthly highlights.

Cementing in new posts for the raspberries; digging the new spring border

Looking good this month:

• Cotinus coggygria Royal Purple ( Smoke bush)- a bushy deciduous shrub which grows to 5m it has deep purple leaves that become redder in autumn and large feathery pink inflorescences in summer. Grow in well drained soil in sun or partial shade
• Kniphofia Bees Lemon a frost hardy red hot poker that is not so dominated by leaves as other pokers. It has deep green grass type leaves and prefers moist but well drained soil in sun or part shade. It flowers in late summer and early autumn. Kniphofias are native to Africa.

Bulbs: Tulips don’t need to be planted until late October or November. The colder temperatures help to wipe out viral and fungal diseases that may infect the bulbs.

Activities in Bridge’s garden this month:

• Put in posts to support the raspberry canes
• Lawn care
• Take cuttings of tender perennials
• Prick out wallflowers
• Cut back Lychnis and Onopordum, pull up Honesty plants keeping the papery heads and collecting seeds
• Sow more hardy annual seeds and pricking out and potting on ones that have been sown earlier they need a set of true leaves before they are ready for pricking out
• Sow more hardy annual seeds including Cerinthe and Dill
• Sow winter salad seeds in the greenhouse in gutters and outside under cloches
• Sort out plants in the cold frame
• Pot up sempervivums
• Work on the two big borders on either side of the hawthorn hedge one border will be a spring border and the other for later flowering plants. We took out most of the plants to clear the beds and divide up some plants that will go back or be moved elsewhere.
• Continue work on mosaic step by the greenhouse
• Dig up onions and earth up leeks to keep them white
• Cut back box hedge on herb bed and tidy the rosemary

Mels method for drying seeds at home; pricking out seedlings