Sunday 28 April 2013

Thursday 25th April 2013

Since Easter we have had lots more visitors in the kitchen garden as the weather improves and there is much more produce to see-we even get people coming from the cafe to see where their salad came from! We are encouraging people with our regular produce sales and signage and we have also been planting herbs and scented plants around the terrace where people will be eating our fruit and veg in the summer!


This is honeysuckle going in the rose bed to climb over the terrace railing.....


...but we are also still working hard on the veg-these are the string supports going in for the broad beans




Tuesday 23 April 2013

Tuesday 23rd April 2013

Lovely sunny day and lots of activity including shredding lots of material for the compost, putting up structures for runner beans, planting out and harvesting, making a saw horse and bat boxes plus Sarah's monthly workshop for volunteer gardeners which was attended by 10 volunteers




Monday 22 April 2013

Chris Whittle 22/4/13


Chris is a relative newcomer to Ford Park having only started at the end of 2012, but is enjoying the time he spends in the workshop on a Tuesday & Thursday. Chris worked for GSK (Glaxo) for 35 years and spent a lot of time working away from home in the south east of England  and has worked at various countries abroad  and spent 6 months in Singapore.

After retiring he has been able to spend more time with his family, and devote more time to his hobbies which are  fishing, photography, travelling and going off in the caravan. He was also a volunteer at Swarthmoor Hall.

Click to enlarge



As well as enjoying the outdoor life he likes nothing better than to be making something, especially being able to reuse any wood that might be available to make the various wildlife boxes & planters both for use at Ford Park and to sell to visitors.   






His interests in nature and wildlife are also being met in the grounds of the house and he can often be seen strolling round Ulverston and the surrounding areas with his camera. If you would like to see any of his photographs of places visited both here in the UK & abroad then this is a link to his website. 

Sunday 21 April 2013

 Thursday April 18th 2013

Harvesting is going very well! Lots of salads of all sorts are going to the Coach House cafe as well as our first crops of rhubarb and leeks-all very satisfying and not a food mile in sight!!












Wednesday 17 April 2013

16th April 2013

Our first Bat colony box from a design supplied by the Westmorland and Furness bat group! As part of our desire to work in harmony with nature our volunteers have been making bat, bird and bug boxes for our own use and for sale -this design was a new one!


We have also been busy completing a propagation table and working on the compost with wood chippings (from our new shredder), torn up brown paper, tea bags, dead plant material, manure and shredded paper. In addition we have checked and moved our wormery to a better position and added to our loam pile. We are keen to develop our own compost and plant feed wherever possible!





Tuesday 16 April 2013

David - 4/4/13




I can feel spring is in the air and I can see signs of this with all the daffodils & other spring flowers blooming in the warm sunshine as I walk through the grounds to meet up for a chat over coffee with David in the garden room.
David has been volunteering for just over 5 years and was born and brought up in Ulverston, before retiring he worked for a security company at Ford Park so he knows the house & gardens really well.
Click on any picture to enlarge.


You can often see David in the workshop making window boxes, planters, bat and bird boxes ready to sell to the public,  along with Chris who I am hoping to speak to soon. But equally he is at home doing jobs in the grounds.
The finished planter





 I was curious to know why he had volunteered and his answer was that he wanted to give something back to the community. The social aspect of planning & working with others is also an important factor for him and I suspect for the other volunteers too.





The Car Boot Sales he has organised are going very well with the first one on Easter Monday.  Now on every Thursday between 4.00pm – 6.00pm. The cost for a table is £6 and 50p for the car park, with requests for donations from browsers. Do pop along and see if you can bag a bargain.


Monday 15 April 2013

Monday 15th April 2013

Do come along to our Gardening Workshop next Saturday the 20th April if you are busy all week but would love to learn more! The workshop is called "Spring into Spring" and is all about Planting & Sowing Your Veg-it will teach you to think about the needs of plants and seeds and practice techniques to help you to sow and transplant successfully this Spring.

The cost is £30 including a light lunch and refreshments.For more information or to book please ring Sarah on 01229 588164

Friday 12 April 2013

Thursday April 11th 2013

It is warming up and we have had a small amount of rain so we have been planting out and building the support structure for the summer raspberries. We are getting lots of visitors-it has been extremely busy over the Easter holidays! We also had a visit from Dave and Hazel from Furness Beekeepers and have decided where to site our beehive-very exciting!

Thursday 11 April 2013

Paddy Dillon - John Muir Project



11/04/2013

I had a very interesting chat with Paddy  recently who has been volunteering since last October. Paddy is an Outdoor Writer & Photographer and occasionally gives talks about his work at the Coach House. As an Ulverston resident who loves the outdoors and having spent lots of time walking in the grounds of Ford Park he decided to become a volunteer and one of his first jobs was spent raking up leaves.
This is a never ending job as you can imagine so after discussion with Kim it was decided that as part of the John Muir Awards he would set up a tree trail. To start he updated the original tree survey that was last completed in 2007.  Then to begin the trail he explored the grounds to see where to best situate the trail and what trees to use. Each tree on the trail has a number and information about it and is  great fun for both children & adults to follow.  
The John Muir Award has three elements to it & these are:
1 To explore the area.
2 To conserve that area.
3 To share information about it.
In creating this wonderful tree trail Paddy has managed to do all three very successfully and this trail will delight visitors for years to come. You can pick up a leaflet from the Coach House Cafe so do call in and take a stroll to see if you can find all the trees. 
www.paddydillon.co.uk 



Click on the picture to enlarge.

Click on the picture to enlarge

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Tuesday 9th April 2013

A Strawberry planter, propagation bench, window boxes and the refurbishment of a market stall-we have been in construction mode today! We have also been planting peas, beans and spinach out in the beds and doing masses of sowing, pricking out and potting on + watering!






Monday 8th April 2013

Our new trainee gardener Simon Kirkwood started today! He has lots of experience (mostly decorative/amenity gardening) and qualifications in food production so we hope to give him lots more food growing experience and a chance to complete level 3 qualifications -we are sure he will fit in very well with all our volunteers and be a real asset to the team!!

Monday 8 April 2013

Monday 8th April 2013

Last week we spent some time putting in tensioned wiring for the espaliered apples and harvesting lots of mizuma, american land cress, kale, broccolli, pak choi and lambs lettuce! We are now weighing and recording all our harvesting for the next 12 months so that we can get a good  idea of our productivity-we just need some warmth and rain so that everything will grow faster!


Monday 1 April 2013

Monday 1st April 2013

Easter Bunny and the Gardener! We had about 500 people in the park and garden today-lots of people looking around the kitchen garden, doing the tree trail through the orchard, buying plants and asking our gardener questions