Thursday 15th June 2023

Dahlia Improvement

One of our volunteers, Ram, brought in some Dahlia tubers today that he had spare, from his own garden. We decided not to delay and put them into the ground immediately.

We found an ideal spot by the front gate, underneath the large notice board, in the grass verge.

Within half an hour we had dug over a nice rectangular border, added some of our home grown compost, and planted up the Dahlias.

We look forward to a splash of welcoming colour by the entrance in the coming months.

Sunny Side Up

Another free gift. This time from our neighbours at Knighton Hall.

The Vice Chancellor's wife is a keen gardener. As well as growing vegetables she has recently raised a bunch of sunflower seedlings. She very kindly donated a dozen for the arboretum.

The perfect spot was found. South facing, at the bottom end of our two willow structures.

We used old willow canes as stakes and tied in the sunflowers and gave them a good water. Another splash of colour to come.

Running Repairs.

As you will know from previous blogs we started planting in our willow structures at the end of March. Here we are now in mid-June and we can clearly see the results.

The top willow structure was planted in first and the second set of cuttings planted in a week or so later.

The difference in the two structures is very noticeable. The top structure is generally thriving, with only a few of the whips failing to root.

The delay in planting the second structure has resulted in many of these whips failing to take, having died and turned brown.

The second structure needs to be redone as the result is not a success. Today we used the second structure as a donor and removed some of the good whips from there and used them to replace dead whips in the top structure.

It was astounding to see the amount of root growth on some of our donor whips.

Hopefully, our running repairs will result in a 100 percent green and growing top willow structure. It certainly has come along in the 10 weeks since the initial planting.

Since this is our first attempt at willow planting I think we can be justifiably proud of what we have achieved.