Rosamund Community Garden Update April 2025

a wildlife garden for the community in Guildford, Longdown Road, GU4 8PP

Hello and welcome to April’s garden update.

📅UPCOMING EVENTS AT THE GARDEN

  • Saturday, 5th April, 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm - Family Gardening Session at Rosamund Community Garden Bring the whole family for some outdoor fun! It’s a wonderful opportunity to connect with nature, learn new skills, and enjoy the fresh air. Drop in on the first Saturday of each month » non-members please REGISTER HERE 

  • Thursday, 17th April - Surrey Choices garden clearing (closed group)

  • Thursday, 24th April - Surrey Hills Society - cobbing the hub (closed group)

  • Sunday, 27th April - Men’s Pitstop at the Hub (usual gardening session pm)

  • Tuesday, 29th April - Inghams Corporate - cobbing the hub (closed group)

  • Saturday, 17th May, 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm Women’s Empowerment Circle at Rosamund Community Garden.» BOOKING AND INFO

🌍EVENTS AT ZERO GUILDFORD » CLICK

🌱GARDEN NEWS

We’ve had a perfect month at the garden with lots of welcome sunshine and cool temperatures to keep the plants from putting on too much growth too soon. Our salads in the poly-tunnel are superb and it’s been a joy to share out big bags of tasty leaves at the end of a shift. The volunteers have been busy sowing seeds to keep the food coming, and we’re planning to grow loads of flowers for the pollinators (and us).

Ann is nursing lots of tomato varieties in her sun-room, and her famous sweet-peas will be coming up when the frosts have finished.

This winter we trialled using the scythed hay from the orchard as a mulch on the beds, and it’s worked really well, keeping the soil damp and full of life until we’re ready to plant. This can be a bit of a slug hotel too, but so far we haven’t had a problem, and Kate has heard it’s a no slug year, so it must be true!

The fruit-trees are coming into full bloom and have been beautifully mulched by our groups to keep the grass down. Time will tell if our attempts to save the rabbit-damaged tree bark will work, but they are now all fenced and it seems to be keeping the bunnies at bay.

Paul Jolley caught a bit of footage of the barn owl on the wildlife camera in the tree-bog so we will put a platform up asap for it to use (and to keep the loo clean) They do a lot of poo!

We’ve had a lot of new volunteer enquiries as well as some lovely connections with community groups, so it’s looking like the Hub is going to be busy this year.

Water Harvesting

Lisa has done a great job researching and buying the solar watering unit for poly 1. It was successfully installed last year and we’re now putting the finishing touches with the lines and sprays into the beds. This will make a massive difference going forward as we can program the system to water at set times, and it’s using the rain-water harvest from our massive tank.

Hub news

Some of the outreach team from RHS Wisley came to see the garden last week and we’re hoping to collaborate with them on a new exciting project (watch this space)

Surrey Choices and Surrey Hills Society have been meeting with Helen to talk about bringing groups up to the garden to help with the Hub and to do gardening.

Scott Brownrigg Architects came up and took measurements for the new camp kitchen they’re designing for the Hub. We’re hoping to install a living roof and use mostly up-cycled materials. The architects would love to come and help build it too, so hopefully we’ll get that underway in the next few months.

John Draper from the Spoon Carving group has installed his beautiful sign onto the Hub and we’ll be installing the pottery artwork from Anamica’s group once the walls are completed. It’s starting to look pretty …

SCC have donated very generous funding as part of the Pitstop project, and this has enabled us to buy the stone to complete the plinths around the bottom of the wattle and daub sections. Many thanks to Blair Parrott and Mike Rowlands for making this happen.

Jane’s Family Gardening groups on the 1st Saturdays of the month provide a lovely space and opportunity for families to come and garden together.  With special thanks to the Jolley Family for their support and engagement during the past few months.

Jane is also co-facilitating some Women’s circles at the Hub to provide a friendly atmosphere for women to come together to connect, reflect, and support one another. (see events above).

Schools

We said farewell to the students from GHS and RGS who’ve been doing their community volunteering at Rosamund over the winter. Thanks to them and Tom Shimell, their teacher, for all the hard work. Hopefully, we will see them again next year.

The compost area is coming along slowly, with 3 bays completed so far, and Tony has made a lovely picket fence along the front.

Lastly, the Forest Garden area is starting to shape up (see update below) with a new woven edging, and we’re starting to plant perennial edibles around the trees that will hopefully provide new plants to share and grow.

Forest Gardening

by Clare Millington

I just wanted to share my new journey into the community of forest gardeners. I was lucky enough to get some funding from Surrey Wildlife Trust for a forest gardening course with the Orchard Project.

The course was brilliant and really engaging, and, having just finished, I am raring to go and practice what I’ve learnt.

Forest gardening is for me a bringing together of so many types of growing that I’ve dipped into over the years: permaculture; cottage gardening; companion gardening; no-dig; organic; community etc, and it really felt the absolute best course I could have chosen.

The concept is simple - look at any healthy, natural woodland setting and you’ll see a symbiosis of plants all living in harmony eg: tree canopies allowing light in the early spring for bluebells and garlic to flower, then providing shade and an underground network of roots and fungi to keep the soil alive and moist. Shrubs and bushes and herbaceous plants in the understorey all playing a part in their ecosystem, and climbers using the trees for support and providing habitat for insects and birds.

These groups of plants - tree, shrub, climber, ground cover are called guilds, and if you get the combination right, they become self-sustaining and mutually beneficial.

A great example would be an apple tree that needs lots of nutrients to produce fruit. So you’d plant a comfrey plant under it, which brings nitrogen and potassium with its long tap roots and feeds them to the tree. The comfrey also comes into flower and attracts the pollinators to the tree to enable the fruit to set. All the pea family are nitrogen fixers, so you could add a perennial sweet pea to climb up the tree and feed it, as well as providing nectar.

Once you’ve filled your garden with guilds of perennial plants that either provide food or medicine or dye or flowers, you have beauty and a productive low maintenance food forest for years ahead.

At the moment we’re planting what we already have plenty of - herbs, comfrey, currants for example, but we’re excited to start putting in some lesser seen perennials such as perennial kales and broccolis, dye plants and perennial roots such as skirret, ginger and liquorice.

The hope is to show what can be done on a low budget to garden sustainably and organically for climate change resilient foods.

The best quote from my course was “nothing is a mistake, everything is an experiment” which is a fantastic life mantra and makes me feel very differently about being adventurous and having a go.

👩🏻‍🌾APRIL JOBS AT THE GARDEN

  • Water poly-tunnels and seedlings in the poly-tunnels when dry

  • Weed and mulch front beds ready for planting

  • Keep sowing salads and greens in modules

  • Mulch around plants in herb bed

  • Harvest salads in Poly 1 and keep picking flowering heads on kales (they’re delicious and this keeps the plants from going to seed)

💮PLANT OF THE MONTH by Helen Harris

Primose

Latin name: Primula vulgaris

Habitat: Primroses thrive in shady, moist environments, making ancient woodlands, hedgerows, and grasslands their favoured habitats

Description: A rosette-forming herbaceous (semi-evergreen) perennial about 20cm tall, with tongue-shaped, deeply veined, bright green leaves. Flowers visible from early spring. They are scented, usually primrose-yellow, measuring about 2.5-3.5cm across.

Value to Wildlife: Primroses offer a vital food source to early pollinators including the brimstone and small tortoiseshell butterflies as well as the bee fly and hairy footed flower bee as they emerging in early spring. Bees, butterflies, and other insects visit primroses for their nectar, while primrose seeds contribute to the diet of birds and small mammals. Additionally, primroses are an indicator species for ancient woodlands.

Medicinal and Culinary Uses: Historically, primroses were prized for their medicinal properties. They were used in traditional remedies to alleviate respiratory issues, headaches, and insomnia. The leaves and flowers were brewed into infusions or poultices, while the roots were known for their expectorant qualities. Primrose flowers are edible and can be candied or used to garnish desserts and salads.

Folklore and Cultural Significance: Delicate yet hardy harbingers of spring, primroses hold a special place in the culture, and folklore of the United Kingdom. It was considered a magical plant, associated with fairies and springtime renewal. Legend has it that primroses could act as a gateway to fairy realms if the flowers were presented in the correct arrangement. In Victorian flower language, primroses symbolized youth and innocence, often exchanged as tokens of love and friendship. The plant is traditionally used in May to adorn doors and thresholds to ward off evil fairies.

April 19th is ‘Primrose Day’. This date is the anniversary of the death of the former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, whose favourite flower was the primrose. Queen Victoria supposedly sent him bunches regularly and to this day primroses are laid at his statue by Westminster Abbey on this date every year.

References:

The Rosamund Community Garden shares a membership system with Guildford Environmental Forum for joining info please email [email protected]

We look forward to seeing you in the garden soon!

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