Welcome to June’s garden update.

First, thank you to Mat Silvester of “matsnap” for this beautiful drone footage⬇️

📅UPCOMING EVENTS  

• Sunday 9th June - Big Green Week Guildford High Street inviting Guildford to “Be part of a Greener Guildford” Rosamund stall 10:00 am - 4:00pm (come and support us) INFO
  

• Sunday 2nd June - Cobbing the Hub - All welcome 2:30 pm - 4:30 pm (refreshments supplied)
  

• Sunday 23rd June - Cobbing the Hub - All welcome 2:30 pm - 4.30 pm (refreshments supplied)
  

• All Tuesdays in June - Cobbing the Hub - All welcome 2.30 pm - 5:00 pm
  

• Wednesday 3rd July, 6:30 pm - 8:45 pm Joyful Outdoors Foraging workshop at Rosamund Garden (limited places & priority booking for RCG members until 5 June and 10% discount for Rosamund volunteers too)

  
  Join our resident forager, Elspeth from Joyful Outdoors on a small group summer foraging walk designed for those who crave a deeper connection with nature. This walk will feed your soul, spark your curiosity and kindle a love affair with wild plants.

  
  Using all your senses, you'll learn to identify fascinating species together. These walks are perfect for beginners - Elspeth will guide you and help you gain the confidence to recognise and avoid common poisonous plants. Mid-summer is peak time for wildflowers and this is an abundant time for foragers.

Wednesday 10th July 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm Matrix project group activity. 

Events at ZERO » CLICK

🌱IN THE GARDEN

After some promising hot days, we’ve returned to the wet and windy stuff, for a bit, so things are slowing down apart from the weeds!

The poly-tunnels look lovely with their newly planted tomatoes, cucumbers, and chillis and fresh dressing of Kate’s wonderful Rosamund compost.

The currants are already laden with trusses of fruit and the loganberries and grapes are flourishing in the new fruit-cage. Even the new cherry tree has produced some nice-looking cherries in there. So we wait with baited punnets for the summer colour to arrive.

Elsewhere, the new raised beds have been filled with brash, manure, and compost, following the Hugelkultur method, and planted with potatoes, squash and brassicas. So far no weeds or slugs have been seen, which is unheard of at Rosamund, and is a very lovely novelty to be faced with. 

The orchard is waist-high with grasses and flowers and looks lovely with the paths and swales cutting through.

The wildlife pond has had many new visitors, namely 2 ducks and a beautiful dragonfly, some damselflies and many pond skaters. Who knows what's going on beneath the surface, but I’m sure we’ll be doing some dipping before long. Margaret is organising a wildlife survey soon, so we’ll report back on the findings.

In the orchard, Helen’s yellow rattle swales have all sprouted and can be clearly seen in this drone photo of the garden:

This is exciting and will start the bio-diversity journey for the wild-flower drifts there.

The wildflower patch near the willow bog is sprouting too, so hopefully there will be flowers to share in the next newsletter.

As promised, Ringway has started landscaping the entranceway and paths from the gate to the hub. They have cleared and created a wonderful hibernaculum bank from the spoil, which we have sown with wildflowers; and a lovely rectangular planting space, which will be planted in the autumn with native trees and shrubs etc to provide nectar, and food for the wildlife and us to share. 

Andrew from Ringway has done a great job of growing edibles and ornamental plants for the depot greening project. We’ve been invited to visit this month, so watch this space for photos.

The paths will be paved with a natural clay mix to provide a flat surface to make the garden accessible to all. We plan to make a new bay at the gateway for drop-offs of woodchip etc.

Work has started on recycling the arbour into trellis work. The climbing plants have survived the collapse and are working their way through the lattice. We’ve had a lovely red honeysuckle display and are now waiting for the jasmine and passionflowers to appear. 

Despite the rain, most of the beds are looking really good after all the weeding and planting, we just need a good load of sunshine to really get things going.

This month we will be focussing on the hub and working on the cob and wattle and daub walls in a big push to get them finished. If you fancy having a go, please come along. It’s amazing how much we can get done with a bigger group.

⚜️CUBS CULTIVATE SKILLS AT THE GARDEN by Julie

On a gorgeous May Wednesday evening, the First Merrow Explorers Cubs pack met at Rosamund Garden to help them earn their Gardening Badge. They all had a wonderful time planting basil in pots for them to take home and wheelbarrowing mulch from the front gate to the raised beds. They had a tour of the garden and we explained about organic gardening and the no-dig method. They also loved eating the fresh chives from the beds!

A fun and educational time was had by all!

🐌 JUNE JOBS AT THE GARDEN

• Lay the cardboard on the new bed (ready for woodchip mulch)

• Continue weeding the front beds and clearing around the arbour

• Install post supports and trellis

• Clear long grass around the fruit trees to provide air circulation

• Collect manure from next door for the compost bays

• Cut back brambles etc in the compost bays

🌿PLANT OF THE MONTH: YELLOW RATTLE by Helen Harris

Latin name: Rhinanthus minor

Distribution: widespread, common, grassland

Flowering time: May-June

Description: Yellow rattle is an annual wild flower that thrives in grasslands. It has yellow, tube-like flowers protruding from an inflated, green structure called the calyx. It has serrated leaves (that look a little bit like tough elongated nettle leaves) which sprout opposite each other all the way up the stem. Grows 5 – 18 ins (12 – 50 cm) high. 

When the flowers of yellow-rattle fade, the brown calyxes stay visible and harden and inside the tiny seeds ripen and give a distinctive 'rattle', when you shake them. 

Common names: The name “rhinanthus” comes from two Greek words meaning nose and flower, due to the projecting beak of the upper portion of the flower. Yellow rattle is also known as Cock’s Comb and Penny Grass and is a member of the Figwort family

Herbal Uses: Yellow Rattle is allegedly good for coughs and dimness of sight. The ripening seeds of yellow provide food for the caterpillars of the Grass Rivulet moth, which live inside the seed capsules before they overwinter as pupae underground.

Ecological Importance: Yellow rattle is known as ‘the meadow maker’ or ‘nature’s lawnmower’. The UK charity PlantLife states that yellow rattle is the most important plant you must establish when creating a wildflower meadow. This is because it is a semi-parasitic plant that feeds off nearby grasses. For this reason, while it was once seen as an indicator of poor grassland by farmers, it is now often used to turn improved grassland back into meadow: by diverting water and nutrients from the roots of surrounding grasses it can suppress their growth by up to 60%. In this way, it creates space for more delicate plants to push their way through and thrive.

Yellow Rattle at Rosamund Garden: We were lucky enough to work with BugLife last year to introduce yellow rattle into our orchard at Rosamund Garden, as part of our project to increase biodiversity in the garden. BugLife provided very fresh, locally grown seed and helped a group of our volunteers to scarify strips across the grass in the meadow with hoes, rakes and a hand mower one rainy day last November. The seed was sown immediately in time to vernalize in the winter frosts. 

Just as we finished sowing a huge vibrant rainbow emerged to bless us, and I am pleased to say we have been rewarded with a fantastic germination rate and gorgeous swathes of yellow rattle in our orchard this June. You can see how much it has suppressed the grass where it has been planted. This autumn we will collect our own seed and repeat the process in new areas. 

Huge thanks to Louis Harrington Edmans at BugLife for supporting our project and to all the volunteers who helped with the backbreaking work!

📰COMMUNITY NEWS

🐝 Peter’s Updates

“We're all famous! Here's a pic from the recent filming day in June's edition of BeeCraft (it's a beekeeping magazine) alongside my regular column”

»ENJOY PETE’S JUNE BEE BLOG - CLICK TO READ

🦋Moths To Spot In June

Another date for your diary - Restore Nature Now - Saturday 22nd June 12:00 - Central London » INFO 

GARDEN VOLUNTEER GROUP SESSIONS

We have regular groups on Tuesday and Sunday from 2.00 pm - to 4.00 pm and Friday from 10.00 am - 12.00 pm so if you want to come and garden together, just turn up. If you are in our WhatsApp group, please also use this to check if people are in the garden for a session.

👥TEAM VOLUNTEER GROUP SESSIONS

💰MEMBERSHIP 

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

Happy Gardening!