A is for Autumn and Apples on St Ann’s Allotments. With over 2,000 fruit trees on site, we are surrounded by bejeweled beauties, fit to burst. The Community Orchard is home to a whole array of these trees, featuring 30+ varieties you’d never see in the supermarket. With our fantastic volunteer team, we’ve been picking,…
Dear friend, We hope you had a wonderful Summer holiday. We’re already well into the Autumn spirit, with a bountiful harvest of fruit and veg (more on that at the end of this newsletter!) and the launch of our Autumn workshop programme 🍁 Featuring practical events for gardeners and relaxing floristry and crafts. We hope that…
St Ann’s Community Orchard will be 21 years old at the start of September, yet, despite this coming of age, its main focus will always be the world of the child. It was originally conceived way back in 2001 as a way of demonstrating a use for what were then overgrown plots at risk of…
Some years ago, when visiting family in Australia, my grandson bought me a plaque to hang on the door of my shed. It says, “GRANDAD’S SHED – BIKES, TOYS AND TREASURES MENDED WHILE YOU WAIT – PAYMENT IN CUDDLES AND SMILES”. The pleasure that gives me is comparable with the pleasure that I get from…
I’ve come across a link between the Hungerhill Gardens and halibut. More precisely, Ford’s Avenue and halibut. When I was at school, my science teacher told me not to sit looking like “a cod faced haddock”, but my first experience of halibut, as opposed to cod and chips from Elsie’s at the bottom of Carlton…
In mid-July, we experienced two days of record high temperatures. Although cooler weather soon followed it was too late to save many plants that had been scorched by the sun. The science shows that an increase in the frequency of severe weather is occurring, over and above the occasional freezing winter or dry summer when…