Preparation is the key!

We are busy getting ready for a Christmas Weekend which includes meeting Father Christmas in the Walled Kitchen Garden. So we have been putting solar lights in and making yet more wreaths to order plus wrapping up the blueberry pots cosily in bracken, planting future wild flower meadows in window sill troughs and generally tidying up and weeding!

A Christmas Quotation

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year

Mistletoe

Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
One last candle burning low,
All the sleepy dancers gone,
Just one candle burning on,
Shadows lurking everywhere:
Some one came, and kissed me there.

Tired I was; my head would go
Nodding under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
No footsteps came, no voice, but only,
Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely,
Stooped in the still and shadowy air
Lips unseen - and kissed me there.

Walter de la Mare

Encourage the children!

We currently have a shop in our cafe which has lots of small gifts to encourage children to get into gardening such as seeds, gardening tools, gloves and labels-all excellent stocking fillers. And don't forget that we run family gardening activities during the school holidays and volunteers are welcome to bring their children with them on a Tuesday or Thursday (our regular volunteering days)!

Winter Jobs

We have been busy with Christmas decorations including creating ivy pyramids to go by the cafe door, making wreaths for sale and creating "snowy trees" with branches and white paint to hang decorations on! But we have also been building up our compost and leaf mulch, harvesting salad, sprouts and kale, mulching our asparagus, artichokes, strawberries and rhubarb with bracken from the nearby hill, "forcing" our chicory and rhubarb, maintaining paths and planting lettuce and chinese cabbage!!

Christmas wreath making workshops

Our head gardener Sarah is running workshops (with some mulled wine and spiced apple juice!) to show local people how to create their own sumptuous wreaths using lots of natural materials-this has been very successful as you see below and it's great to encourage people to look at their own gardens as a creative resource!

Inspiration!

I have been inspired by the story of the Incredible Edible Todmorden Project where the local community have grown food in the grounds of all the local schools, along the canal, in the gardens of the health centre, the police station etc and got lots of education and business organisations involved -check the web site and Ted Talk out!

http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqhx4Etdvr0