The Changing Face of the Garden - 2003
A final view of the freshly dug garden, with lots of leaf litter dug in. This not only got rid of the huge amounts of leaf litter that Mr S. had gathered in black plastic bags, but helped to improve the soil. The worms seemed to love it and you could almost hear their cries of joy.
A bit of a jump in time, but here you can see that the garden is well established. Many of the plants were sown and grown in cells (little pots of peat) by the willing volunteers, grown in Mr S.'s glasshouse and then planted out. Note the runner beans to the left and the tall sunflowers to the right. You will be seeing more of them later.
After only a couple of weeks, the garden has changed dramatically. You can see that the runner beans and the sunflowers are competing to be the most impressive. The calendula (in yellow) are determined that they won't go unnoticed. Do you think the sunflowers are already looking huge? They're just getting going!
I did have a few weeks away from the school to bask in the hot sun and wiltering drought. When I returned to the garden, I wasn't too sure what I would find. Would the plants still be there? Would they have turned wrinkly and brown in the sun (like many a holiday-maker?). No. They had defied not having any water and GREW! I felt very small by the sunflowers.
Only a week on, but the plants have still grown huge amounts in a week. By now I could see the flower buds appearing at the top of the sunflowers, who looked as though they were ready to conquer a land or two. The runner beans were bursting with beans, which tasted great.
By now the children were back at school, and they were equally as amazed as I was by how much everything had grown. We also started to pick the runner beans to sell to the school, and raised a few useful pounds to use for the garden the next year. The tallest sunflower measured over 3 metres - close to the world record perhaps? Have you ever read 'Day of the Triffids'?
And another view of the Garden, with an attractive fuchsia in the foreground (with red flowers). There is a plan afoot to turn the rockery you can see in the centre of the photograph into a pond. Having some frogs in the pond would be great to control slugs, which we didn't have loads of this year, but you never know in the years to come.
Tragedy! It wasn't a great suprise perhaps, but still sad to see one of the great sunflowers fallen (it had been very windy). This is when I discovered that the Garden had slugs, as they almost ran to the fallen flower head to eat the seeds (which, for an invertebrate with only one foot, is quite a feat (!)). I had dressed another sunflower head in string and silver foil (the one left standing, closest to this text) , to detract the birds from eating the seeds, as I wanted to save an entire seed head. Did it work?
No. Because, a couple of weeks later, before the seeds had ripened, it had fallen too. The slugs moved in quickly, and before you could say 'Squash a slug with soapy slime', they had eaten over half of the seeds in the head. How these plants survive in the wild from one year to the next, when slugs are always around, I have no idea.
Here is another view of the fateful fallen sunflower day. The one sunflower left standing refused to fall. Only in mid December, when a willing group of volunteers and myself went out to clear the garden, did we finally make it fall. By then the birds had moved in to eat their fill (which I was happy to let them do), so I didn't get my full sunflower seed head after all.
All the plants that we cleared from the garden were put onto the compost heap. They would then rot down into compost, which could be recycled and put back on the Garden to help plants grow the following year. Perhaps my Halloween pumpkin would help to grow a future pumpkin plant? He seemed happy about it anyway.
Standing back from the compost bin, you can see how much had been put on it already, and this is before the Garden was cleared. The new compost that will go on the garden in 2004 should be well rotted leaf manure, and give the plants a good head start in life.
By now the Garden had felt its first frosts, and the beans had decided to give up and cop it. The last remaining sunflower still standing, although yellowing, still refused to fall, only to lean over more. As for the Calendula - would they ever give up?
The last photo of the Garden for 2003, caught on a misty morning (no, that's not dirt on my camera lens). It's been a good growing year, enjoyed by both pupils and teachers alike. What will we grow next year? Will the sunflowers be bigger? Will the mini-garden hippo still allow us to grow things in his garden (sorry Mr S., and you thought it was yours). Find out in 2004.
