Unfortunately it doesn’t look as if we’ll have any meetings this year but there is good news on the gardening front with garden centres due to open on 6th April.
So we can start planning our new borders and tubs and pots displays.
I thought, in the spirit of the COPS Conference in Glasgow later this year, we could consider making our gardens much more eco friendly as well as growing more of our own food, as a pleasurable way of contributing to the climate cause.
As an easy starter, we could leave our grass longer or not cut it all and see how many wild flowers appear.
That’s a much more eco friendly approach than using astroturf if you don’t like cutting grass!
This would be great for insect life which we need for pollination of everything.
For the spring, common bulbs are life-savers for insects - snowdrops, crocuses, grape hyacinths, bluebells, then hellebores , primroses, oxlips and shrubs like mahonia and flowering currant. We must not forget fruit trees and their blossom.
We could also concentrate on adding bee and butterfly friendly plants to our tubs using peat free compost. In general, single simple flowers are better for bees to access the pollen, so you could avoid the newer double varieties of things like marigolds and petunias- bees like the paler flowers. Busy Lizzies, nasturtiums, cosmos, and french marigolds are attractive to bees.
I think we all know about buddleias and butterflies but there are many more border plants to consider, such as wallflower, sedums, salvias, lavender, monarda, catmint, geraniums, echinacea, asters, scabious, foxgloves, verbena bonariensis, dahlias - single or semi double are best, Annuals such as snapdragons, nicotiana, cornflower, calendula, and cosmos are very bee friendly as are herbs such as chives, borage and oregano, which also have pretty flowers.
Perhaps the editor would allow us to share gardening tips in a column in the Bridge so we can all learn what works locally. Maybe we could start with growing our own vegetables as I know there are lots of local experts!
Meanwhile happy gardening!
Jan Silburn