The sensory beds

As I promised last week, this is what all of the wheelbarrow-ing last week was about.The lads who helped me filling up the raised beds were full of enthusiasm, even this week, It was great to see them working together to get the barrows loaded. Pushing heavy wheelbarrows is a great activity for getting proprioceptive feedback.

This first bed, which we filled last week is the "Tasting" bed, It is all about things which you can eat. So at the moment, we have planted herbs, strawberries, raspberries, broad beans, wild strawberries and a courgette plant.

This is the bed we filled this week, the "Seeing" bed. To start off with we have planted Day Lilies, Crocosmia Lucifer, Columbines and Aliums. These are all quite tall, eye catching plants, and in the future we would like to add other contrasting, colourful plants.

The next beds will be the Smelling and the Touching beds. If you have any plants that you would like to donate to the garden, or allotment, please get in touch, as there will be a home for everything somewhere.

Many Hands Make Light Work

8th June 2016

We had a visit today from the Autism Specialist School group, which means, many eager hands looking for jobs to do. Just what we need in the garden! There are plenty of projects to do.These are hanging baskets which are being filled with different nesting materials; mosses, twigs, animal fur and dried grass. We hope that the birds will visit these to gather materials for their nests.

This is a simple feeder for butterflies or birds, who need a drink in this hot weather

And these pots were painted by the students, to make a colourful addition to our planting displays. Painting is a popular activity with this group, our cable reel table is also getting a makeover!

A group of the students were also very busy with the wheelbarrows this week, helping us to fill up the raised beds with manure, so that we will be able to planting them, but more about that next week. 

Meanwhile on the allotment......

Our first strawberries are ready,

The potatoes are growing really quickly, these needed to be earthed up, to have the soil pulled up around the stems, to that the developing potatoes under the ground don't turn green from the sunlight.

 The raspberries are developing nicely....

And the gooseberries are coming on well too.

Along with the blackberries that are growing along the hedge it looks like there will be plenty of fruit coming from the allotment this year.

Who's hiding by the Bug Hotel?

 25th May 2016

Look who was hiding in the garden today!!

A nice big toad, who was in a box of broken crocks, he was a bit shy.

It was very close to the pond and the area is very overgrown with long grass so he may well have other friends living nearby.

The broken crocks (pieces of terracotta pots) go into the bug hotel to provide lots of different habitats for bugs and insects, which are good for the garden, and interesting to look at.

These sunflowers were started off indoors by K. Now they have grown tall, they need to go out into a larger pot. K enjoyed getting the pot ready and settling the sunflowers into their new pot.




She was also very happy to see the toad, as she loves wildlife, and after I was brave enough to pick it up for her to hold, I was rewarded with these:

A little sprig of buttercups. It's a touching thing to be given a gift by K, even if I did have to touch a toad!

The grass in the sensory garden is growing  and growing, and the raised beds are getting lost. The turf in the beds has been dug and turned upside-down, which should mean the grass dies off and composts.

Now all the beds need is a good thick layer of compost or manure and they will be ready to plant up.