We Blooming Won!

🏆 Gold for Best Wildlife Garden at the Guildford in Bloom awards, and we're also sharing the crown for Best in Category with Watts Gallery! 🌿🌼

We are very excited to have won joint category winner for Best Wildlife Garden in the 2023 Guildford in Bloom Competition.

Judges dodged the summer rainshowers to visit the garden when the grass was up, the crickets humming and the marbled white butterflies looking handsome on the knapweed. This year we emphasised the role of the garden and fields as a conservation site within the wider landscape of rare chalk grassland habitat around Guildford, as well as the variety of links we are forging with other local community groups and charities such as Zero Carbon Guildford and Community Orchard Project South East, Buglife and Surrey Wildlife Trust.

It was good to be able to demonstrate the improvements to the diversity in Rosamund field from three years of conservation grazing and tree popping and show off the beautiful meadow flowers and the view over Guildford whilst hearing linnets, greenfinch and skylarks calling.

Sarah explained about how she was using space in poly 2 to grow plants for the Surrey Wildlife Trust Wilder Communities day, Charlotte talked about our scything day and how we are working to improve the meadow in the orchard area, and Peter about his work to record and educate us all about our bees and moths.

Our corporate days with Systra and Galliford Try, our pond project, our new willow compost loo and of course our ongoing experiments with natural building techniques in the Hub as well as our composting system, efforts to protect and enhance the ecosystem underground in the soil in our growing area and our low cost events such as willow weaving, wassail and apple pressing were all praised by the judges. They also noted the use of the garden by Dof E students and Halow learners.

Thank you to every single one of our volunteers who has supported Rosamund Community Garden over this year, whether financially or with your time and energy, to help support all that we are doing.

🌟 And an extra special shoutout to Ann for her hard work in applying for the award, and a big thanks to Helen for impressing the judges and remembering all this info during the garden tour.

🗓️ EVENTS AT THE GARDEN

🌱Cobbing The Hub, Wednesday 13th September 10:00 am to 3.00 pm - Fedcap Employment, Community Volunteering Day

🌱Cobbing The Hub, Tuesday 19th September 10:00 am to 3:00 pm - Galliford Try, Community Volunteering Day - drop in, all welcome

🌱Open Day with Apple Pressing, Sunday 8th October 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm

Come and join us at our beautiful community garden in Guildford, for a child-friendly afternoon of apple pressing, homemade produce and a chance to meet the volunteers and look around. 

REGISTER

OTHER⬇️

🌱Urban Greening in Guildford with ZERO Guildford, Monday 2nd October 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm at the Three Pigeons Pub, GU1 3AJ

REGISTER

📝GARDEN NEWS FROM CLARE

September is a lovely month as the mad growth starts to slow down and all the fruits ripen ready for harvest.

A lot of the apples and pears are ready to pick, with some fantastic varieties in the orchard to try. You can tell they’re ready to pick when they come away in your hand without effort, and if there are lots of windfalls on the ground.

The autumn raspberries are really great this year and the yellow and red varieties make a very pretty dessert.

The tomatoes have been phenomenal with all the heat, we’ve had yellow ones that are fab roasted with oil and garlic, and some big fat pink heritage varieties which look and taste great with the red cherry types in a salad.

The grapes are looking really good, thanks to Kate and Paula’s work this summer.

Next month we are planning the apple-pressing and open day 8th October, so put it in the diary and hopefully, we’ll get a bumper crop of apples for juicing.

🌟VOLUNTEER SPOTLIGHT - MEET ROBBIE🌟

Robbie has been coming to the garden for a few years now. He gives 2 hours a week of his time and loves mowing, harvesting, watering and sowing seeds. He always forages for some tasty herbs for the teabreak and his favourite is mint tea. Robbie is part of the halow project in Guildford, which supports young adults with learning disabilities. He's a fantastic member of our garden community and says his time at the garden is really fun. We'd like to say a big thank you to people like Robbie who give their time and love to this beautiful space. ❤️

📰COMMUNITY PROJECT NEWS

We now have a beautiful stained glass window in the Tree-bog. Designed and made by local craftsperson Glenda Charlick.

🐝The Party’s Over Boys by Peter Smith

CLICK TO READ

🍎Orchard News by Charlotte

The orchard this year has produced very different results from last year. The crop has been badly affected by wasps and other insects this year, while last year we did not have too much trouble and had bumper crops of all the different apples. My favourite apple tree, the Howgate Wonder, which produced a magnificent crop of enormous apples last year, has not got any usable apples on it.

Meanwhile, all the pear trees have excellent crops (last year there were hardly any) and do not seem to have been affected by insects. They are not yet ripe, so keep an eye on them and try to pick them before the wasps realise they are sweetening up.

🕐SEPTEMBER JOBS AT THE GARDEN

• Regular watering (especially when it’s hotter)- anything in containers and poly-tunnels, new sowings and around the arbour.

• Clearing spaces in the front beds and sowing autumn salads

• Saving seeds and labelling them in envelopes.

• Harvesting tomatoes, beans, sweetpeas, squash etc

AND FINALLY🔚

🌼 Have you had a chance to check out Rosamund Community Garden's contribution in this month's "Guildford Magazine" by Essential Surrey & SW London

Jane McGowen's article, "Digging Deep," beautifully delves into the nourishing impact of community gardening on both our bodies and souls. 🌱

A big shoutout to Clare Millington and Annelize Kidd for their great teamwork in organising and sharing their insights and pictures for this great article. 📸🙏

To read the article with larger text, you may like to click HERE (page 33).

Happy reading! 🤓🌿 

🌳GARDEN VOLUNTEER GROUP SESSIONS

We have regular groups on Tuesday and Sunday from 2.00 pm - 4.00 pm and Friday 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.

💰MEMBERSHIP 

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

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Happy September Gardening!