Bees Butterflies and interpreting the theme

Well it has occurred to me that perhaps I have been a little hasty. A forest garden is a great idea but where will all the flowers be? Once the fruit blossom is over there will be very few and excited as I am about the forest garden concept, I love to have colour all through the season. So, having been entranced by Sarah Ravens series about attracting pollinators to the garden, I have decided that I am going to reinterpret the forest garden theme in order to bring in the insects to the garden and in the long term, help good fruit set!

So what does this mean? Well actually its really good news I think. It means I can still have Dahlias as long as they are single blossoms that have plenty of nectar like the one above, taken at Oxford Botanic Garden last summer, along with its visiting bee. I can also have zinnias, sunflowers, cornflowers, and ammi to name but a few along side pots of annual meadow mixes which I shall trial to see which attracts most of the good guys that we want.

Now I genuinely know this will help to pollinate the fruit I am also going to grow. At work we have bee hives. looked after by a great guy by the name of Arnold who is utterly adorable. Pre bees we grew fruit on the nursery and we had a reasonable amount of fruit each year. However, since the bees something little short of miraculous has taken place. The apples, pears and nectarines have all fruited like crazy as have the grapevines and kiwis. Plus we have seen an increase in birds, with all 9 of our small bird boxes used last year and several nests in heating ducts and trees and last year we found Great Crested Newts in one of our glasshouses. Already this year weve seen birds looking at the boxes and today the bees were flying around and we had hoverflies dancing around in the Daphnes which I have realised, smell like lemon sherberts.

So by growing the right plants to attract in the good guys Ill have great fruit set and hopefully a garden that has enough biodiversity to look after itself and see of any bad guys that might try to come in. I will, of course, report back!!

A bee!! And a happy one!!

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A Trip To Common Farm

On Saturday morning at 6am we set of for the wilds of Somerset and the wonderful Common Farm, to give a workshop on Orchard Management. As we drove towards Stonehenge the sun began to climb and it became apparent just how hard the frost had been the previous night. Wiltshire was covered in a sheet of sparkling white and looked magical.
Arriving at Common Farm is always like arriving home-big hugs and tea and chat and then the realisation that actually this wasnt a social visit. Fabrizio and I walked the 7 acres of Common Farm, looking at the amazing old fruit trees and all the new ones that he has been so busy planting, and then the crew who were joining us began to arrive.
Before lunch we talked about pruning, pruned some of the younger of Common Farms trees and discussed with people how a fruit tree should look and why. The concept that people hopefully left with is that the tree should be open enough to throw a hat through, which Fabrizio demonstrated with great aplomb.
Then we had lunch which was an amazing mutton stew, the recipe for which is on the blog at www.commonfarmflowers.com along with amazing local cheeses and a cheese and onion tart and Georgies world renowned buns.
After lunch we talked about training fruit and planted and began to train a 20m wall of John Downie crab apples into beautiful espaliers. And the lesson I hope everyone took from this is that the secret of success when it comes to training fruit is that you must be in charge of it, not it in charge of you!

Malus John Downie in flower

Malus John Downie in fruit

Finally we burnt a wicker man and had a small wassailling session in the orchard which was a wonderful end to a wonderful day.

For more information about courses and workshops at Common Farm please visit their website at www.commonfarmflowers.com

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