Forest garden border: reviewing the first season

The L-shaped forest garden border along the south (left) and west (right) facing fences,

in July, prior to the new kitchen garden beds being created in front.

My forest garden border was first planted out in March this year, and I thought it would be useful to review it's first season. It's an awkward border to photograph on whole, so I tend to do it in sections, South (the left side) and West (the right side), which I'll use to refer to when discussing specific plants. A full plant list is at the bottom of this post.

The L-shaped forest garden border along the south (left) and west (right) facing fences,

with the just finished (in August) new kitchen garden beds in front.

I'm pretty pleased with the results from the first season. For a start, the blueberries already started producing, in particularly, Vaccinium corymbosum 'Hortblue Petite' on the South side. This was enough to add to several breakfast muselis.

First blueberry harvest

I had put up temporary netting to protect the fruits from the depredations of birds. However, this isn't an easy way to harvest, at least from an ME perspective, as it uses up more energy than you might expect trying to negotiate the netting and access the berries. So I need to make up a better long term netting set-up. I'm thinking of sewing my own netting cage together, I just need to work out the proportions, based on the size the blueberry bushes will eventually reach (about 1m square). A job for winter/spring.

Temporary netting around one of the young blueberry bushes

The Sorrel bulked up quickly and produced plenty of leaves throughout the season, which I have used in curries and other dishes. And the Rhubarb supplied a couple of kilos of fruit. We added manure around the crown at the end of the season, and will add more in Spring, to feed the hungry roots.

The comfrey has provided it's first harvest and I now have a bucket brewing (right) over winter that will give me comfrey tea, a homemade liquid fertiliser, to feed both edible and ornamental plants plants this coming season. Comfrey is rich in Nitrogen, which supports leafy growth, and Potassium, which promotes strong stem growth, flowering and fruiting of both edible and ornamental plants. I decided I didn't need two comfrey plants, so one has been dug up, and an apple tree has been planted in its place.

The apple trees were finally added at the end of November, after I chose and ordered three varieties at the October Apple Day that I attended. The trees that are all 4-5 years old, and there is a slight chance I might get fruit as early as next season. Fingers crossed.

The apple trees I chose were the following: Newton Wonder - double cordon (west-facing border)

Lord Lambourne (left) and Egremont Russet (right) - both single cordons (south-facing border)

A damson has been added to another part of the kitchen garden area. So not in the forest garden per se, but very close by (like, a couple of metres), so I thought it was worth a mention. I suspect it will be 2 or more years before I get any fruit off this tree. And I have planted some crocuses and daffidols in the border, so I get some early season pretty and the bees will have some food.

Overall, I feel like I've harvested quite a lot for the first season of my forest garden border. I'm not expecting to make any further changes to the planting and layout, so now all the plants can settle in and get growing for this coming and future seasons. And maybe, just maybe, I'll get a couple of apples next autumn?!

 Overview of the south-facing border in December.

Overview of the west-facing border in December

If you are interested in seeing how I planned the forest garden border, see my post creating a mini forest garden border.

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Plant List
I've updated the plant list for the whole border, to include the recent additions.

Canopy layer
Apple trees: Malus Newton Wonder, Malus Lord Lambourne, Malus Egremont Russet
Prunus domestica 'Golden Transparent' (greengage)

Just outside of the Forest Garden border are also:
Amelanchier x grandiflora 'Ballerina' and Prunus insititia 'Shropshire Damson'

Shrub layer
Azalea (variety unknown)
Cranberry (variety unknown)
Vaccinium corymbosum 'Bluecrop' (blueberry)
Vaccinium corymbosum 'Hortblue Petite' (blueberry)

Perennial layer - edible
Akebia quinata
Foeniculum vulgare 'Purpureum'
Origanum vulgare 'Aureum' (golden oregano)
Rhubarb (variety unknown)
Rumex acetosa (non-flowering sorrel)
Symphytum x uplandicum 'Bocking 14' (comfrey)

Perennial layer - ornamental
Knautia macedonica
Lychnis coronaria Atrosanguinea Group
Omphalodes cappadocica 'Cherry Ingram' (ornamental)

Ground cover (plants mixed all around the border)
Ajuga reptans 'atropurpurea'
Allium ursinum (wild garlic/ramsons)
Armeria pseudarmeria 'Ballerina Lilac'
Crocus Etruscus Zwanenburg
Crocus Orange Monarch
Crocus Sieberi Spring Beauty
Cyclamen hederifolium
Fragaria x ananassa 'Samba' (strawberry)
Galanthus 'Ophelia'
Narcissus Brackenhurst
Narcissus Minnow
Narcissus Mother Duck
Narcissus Rijnvelds Early Sensation
Phacelia tanacetifolia
Primula vulgaris
Pulmonaria 'Blue Ensign'
Viola odorata 'Queen Charlotte'

Happy new year

Spectacular sunset from our front garden

As you can see, we experienced a pretty amazing sunset on the evening of 29th December. Going by the 'red sky at night' maxim, we were hoping for a good day the next day. We weren't disappointed, and I got the clearest ever photos of the Peak District near Sheffield, on 30th December.

 View from Stanage Edge looking towards the Hope Valley and Mam Tor

 Looking over the landscape of dry stone walls, enclosed farm land, and Burbage Ridge up to the left

 Looking back at Stanage Edge in the late afternoon sun

A peat moorland, near Ringinglow

Best wishes to you for 2020.

Autumn: Fagus sylvatica - common beech

 Fagus sylvatica hedge (right), and the north-facing hedge flower borders

When we first viewed our home, one of the things that quickly won me over was the beech hedge separating our garden from our neighbour's. Unlike a fence that blocks out light, a hedge allows light to filter through, even in the middle of winter. So it means that my hedge borders, which are north-facing, get a lot more light all year round, giving me a wider variety of plants I can grow in that space. Which is great, but in late autumn, it's all about the beech leaves for me.

And even on cold grey days, the colours still offer a warm glow like an open fire, and welcome colour.

And a beech hedge has the bonus of retaining it's gorgeous orange-brown autumn leaves right through until the next spring, only dropping them when the new green foliage comes through.

As is so often the case, common means beautiful.

* * * * *
This is the last in my Autumn series. Other posts in the series:
  Autumn: Acer palmatum 'Sango-kaku'
  Autumn: Prunus mume 'Beni-chidori'
  Autumn: in the Peak District
  Autumn: Salvia 'Amistad'
  Autumn: Cornus 'Norman Hadden'

Autumn: Cornus 'Norman Hadden'

My friend Kate, and I, took a stroll/roll* around Sheffield Botanical Gardens the other day. As always, there was something interesting to find in the gardens. This time, it was this 'shrub', Cornus 'Norman Hadden'.

As you can probably tell, it's a rather large shrub. In fact, it can grow to between 4-8 metres! And wow, see that fruit?!

Yes, this is the fruit, AND it's edible. Apparently the skin isn't so nice but the flesh inside is rather good. I didn't try one, because it wasn't until I got home and looked it up that I found it was indeed edible.

As you can see, it's a rather large 'shrub'. It's too big for my Forest Garden Border, but I have my eye on it for another corner of the garden.

But I think I'll have to go back to the gardens and sneakily pick one of the fruits and give it a try first ;)

Either way, what a fine tree, I mean, shrub.


*she strolled, I rolled on my mobility scooter

* * * * *
Other posts in the series:
  Autumn: Acer palmatum 'Sango-kaku'
  Autumn: Prunus mume 'Beni-chidori'
  Autumn: in the Peak District
  Autumn: Salvia 'Amistad'
  Autumn: Fagus sylvatica

Honeybees: notes from a talk by a beekeeper

Crocus 'Gipsy Girl' with a honey bee, February 2019

The speaker at the recent South Pennines Hardy Plant Society was a beekeeper, Simon Croson, and I picked up some useful info on Honeybees that I thought I’d share.

The Queen and Worker bees are female, and the Drones are male. Queen bees can live up to 5 years, though most live 2-3 years.

In the UK, there are 275 native bees, with a large amount of these being solitary bees. Of these 275, only 1 (ONE!) is a native bee. There are over 1000 species of native bee the world over, yet only 10 (TEN) species of honey bee.

So you can see immediately why problems with honeybees can have such a big impact, with so few species in existence. Overall, other native bees will pollinate more food than honey bees, yet one in every 3 foods we eat comes from honey bees. So if there was a large collapse in honey bee colonies, this could still have a big impact on food availability for humans.

Things have stabilised with the problems with the varroa mite, that hit the news a number of years ago. Partly from use of chemicals against the mite. However, Simon doesn't use any chemicals and he says there is some evidence that bees are adapting to them, suggesting new generations are building resilience.

But we shouldn't be complacent. There is still a lots of problems with access to food, especially with the climate changing, but plants haven't caught up, and they aren't necessarily flowering when the bees need them. Overall, there is still a decline in the health and population of bees that is worrying.

Honey bees don’t hibernate. They go into a semi-dormant state in the cold months, but if the temperatures rise enough, they will leave the hive and seek out plants for nectar. In Feb 2019, in the UK, we had a week of nearly 25 degrees (usually we are lucky to get to 5 degrees), and honey bees left their hives looking for food.

 Honey bee on a Helenium, August 2019

With our changing climate, with warmer wetter winters, this makes planting for winter and early spring food for bees even more important. A post I wrote back in February, Plants for pollinators in late Winter, will give you some ideas on plants you might add to your garden to help honey and solitary bees at this time of year.

With honey colour from Simon’s bees: a medium light brown-orange colour is a generalist, made up of nectar from lots of different plants. A quite pale, almost clear, colour honey, is from the nectar from an Alfalfa (Lucerne) crop near some of his hives. A dark brown-orange is made up of nectar from Buckwheat. So different plants will impact differently on the colour the honey ends up.

A couple of small points that I found interesting: pollen is a source of protein for bees, and bees take water into the hive to help regulate it's temperature. A good plant for late Autumn is common Ivy. This is a plant that a lot of people try to remove from their gardens, but try and leave a patch and let it flower, and you'll see bees supping on it's nectar.

It was an interesting talk and it was useful to know that though there is still a lot to worry about, by planting for bees, we really can make a difference, for the bees, and for ourselves.