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A message from Kingsbridge Community Garden
MID-WINTER WATCH
“February, a form Pale vestured, wildly fair,- One of the North Wind’s daughters
With icicles in her hair.” Edgar Fawcett, “The Masque of Months”, c 1878
weeks of 2020, there have been some bright sunny Fridays, which have encouraged the volunteers to tackle a range of wintery jobs. These have included further restoration to the lower poly- tunnel doors, and some drastic pruning of the redcurrant and blackcurrant bushes in the fruit
cage.Many of the raised vegetable beds have been strewn with matured compost, reclaimed from the compost bins, in readiness for replanting in the spring, and part of our ‘sustainable’ gardening ethos. A major job has been clearing a
A
section of the lower garden which had become infested with convol- vulus and soapwort, together with the spread of the attractive but invasive yellow archangel , Lamium galeobdolen, otherwise known as yellow weasel-snout. Fortunately this plant is shallow rooted, so fairly easily cleared. The same cannot be said of the Epimedium sulphure- um, with its dense mass of roots,which also needed to be removed before the whole area could be replanted with shrubs. We have invested in sever- al new camellias (including ‘Cornish Snow’ and ‘Yuletide’), which we hope will
lthough we have encountered some storms and gales in the opening
in time rival the regular wintertime display of camellia ‘St Ewe’ which has been in bloom since Christmas - a focal point of the lower woodland garden. Indeed all the win-
ter-flowering shrubs have brought colour and pleasure into the garden this winter. The Garrya elliptica, a native of coastal ranges of California, has produced a host of long catkins, shaking their golden pollen everywhere, and proving the aptness of its common name - the Coast silk-tassel bush. At the entrance to the gar- den, the recently-planted yet well-established ‘Daphne odora aureomarginata’ has been full of clusters of sweet-scented blush- pink flowers. Every plant in bloom seems a bonus on wintry days - and the colony of double snowdrops, recently exposed by the removal of autumn leaf debris is no exception - and a real sign that spring might just be on its way, for - snowdrops when winter stops! PS. As we mentioned in the previous Early Winter Watch message, we are now the proud curators of the RHS Gor- don Ford Trophy for the ‘Best Neighbourhood Award Entry’ in the South West, in 2019.
www.k
ingsbridgegarden.co.uk
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