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Sally Nex

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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: school garden

Of triumph and tribulations

30 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by sallynex in design, landscaping

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Bible garden, garden design, olives, school garden, Thyme seats, turf seats, woven willow

The other day, very quietly and without fuss, I triumphed.

The natty blue traffic cones aren’t part of the design (honest)

This is the Bible Garden, formerly a patch of scruffy grass outside the Key Stage One area with some wonky benches plonked on top, at my kids’ school. And it is, at long last, finished.

The school is a Church of England school, so they wanted a Bible Garden in which the plants reference passages in the Bible. It’s a popular concept in the States but less so here – in fact I struggled to find any in the UK.

The whole thing was made even more complicated by the fact that the site was in part shade, and most plants mentioned in the Bible are of course Middle Eastern – so very much sun-lovers. Added to which this is Somerset, so damp (and last year, even damper than usual) and I had to be pretty inventive with what I put in there.

biblegarden4

Playing fast and loose: an olive in the raised bed (Garden of Gethsemane and all that) is a risk in part shade, but it is sheltered. And that’s Mentha longifolia underneath.

There was already a brick-built hexagonal raised bed around 1.2m high, so I based the design around that and created two connected hexagons. The teachers wanted it to feel enclosed, but still open enough that they could see in: and they wanted turf seats, and some reeds (for Moses and his basket).

biblegarden5

Bay lollipops marching around the edges (must move that rubbish bin…)

We ended up edging the whole thing with a low box hedge, but punctuated with bay ‘lollipops’. I steered everyone away from turf seats – too rustic, too scruffy, too much maintenance – and towards raised seats with the tops planted with spreading Thymus serpyllum (I was going to have chamomile but it needs sun). Once small bottoms have sat on them often enough, they should make a lovely dense, fragrant mat.

biblegarden1

Raised bed seating planted with Thymus serpyllum

I’m still not quite sure about the practicalities: after all, it rains quite a lot here so those seats will be damp a lot of the time. But I have a plan B in my back pocket, to replace some of the thyme with small 30cm square paving slabs so the children can sit down but still be surrounded by herbs.

It looks a bit bare at the moment but last week I spent a happy hour or two seeding it with the wildflowers of the field: Agrostemma (corncockle), Nigella (love-in-a-mist) and, slightly incongruously, broad beans, the closest I could get to tares. Actually, I’ve had to interpret the Bible verses fairly loosely: in the back corner, for example, I’ve taken Job’s verse:

“If I have stolen the land I farm and taken it from its rightful owners, if I have eaten the food that grew there but let the farmers that grew it starve, then instead of wheat and barley may weeds and thistles grow.”

…and replaced the thistles with purple Cirsium rivulare ‘Atropurpureum’ (loves damp, happy in part shade) and the wheat and barley with Hordeum jubatum, an annual grass sown pretty easily from seed and with suitably ear-like flowerheads. Should look lovely.

biblegarden3

I wasn’t too sure about the colour of those raised seats at first, but I’m warming – it sets off the daffs beautifully.

And the reeds? A pond was out of the question with small children about, so I’ve done a little bog garden in the corner lined with black plastic. In it I’ve buried a couple of ‘mini-ponds’ – basically plastic flower pots with the holes bunged up – for the real water lovers, Cyperus papyrus and Typha minima. Around them are little marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris) – no Bible mention, just a bit of spring colour.

It’s been a lot of fun, incredibly frustrating (I was building this, on and very off, through the wettest summer, autumn and winter we’ve ever had) and absorbingly interesting: in all, quite the most challenging design I’ve ever done despite its diminutive size. The willow arches, made by a local Somerset willow weaver, have absolutely been the finishing touch, and I’m so pleased with the result. It’s being Officially Opened on Friday, too – I don’t think I’ve ever had anything of mine officially opened before. I hope there will be ribbons!

School lessons

01 Wednesday Oct 2008

Posted by sallynex in pond, wildlife gardening

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

school garden, wildlife hedges

I mentioned some time ago that I’d taken over the school garden.

Well, in the way of these things, shortly after I took it on, they started building work which meant not only was everything on hold for more than a year, but also we lost half the garden before we’d even started.

You take these things on the chin, though, and in fact it’s all worked out OK in the end since now the work has finished, I know where we are and we can go forward. I got all inspired by the Dorset Cereals Edible Playground garden that won Hampton Court this year, and between me and various teachers and parents who should really know better, we’ve come up with a big and rather exciting scheme for developing a new space for the kids to grow lots of food in.

So before we started I thought I’d record what state it’s in at the moment – neglected in places, presentable-ish in others, but in need of a lot of work, hopefully from people large and small.

This is the wildlife pond – weedy, unkempt, and recently much larger. The bit on the other side of the picket fence is tarmac now, but it used to be garden. Never mind: there are plenty of bits left to have fun with, including a raised bed, a soon-to-be herb bed and a bog garden, as well as sundry weed-infested borders which once cleared will be open to inspiration.

This is the (somewhat neglected and overgrown) Millennium Garden – can you see why?

And these are the raised beds along the front of the school itself. Currently planted with a hotch-potch of different plants, and not in too bad a state, but one talented mum has now come up with a design involving box balls, a lot of alliums, some Geranium ‘Rozeanne’ and a few prostrate rosemaries, which will hopefully pull this lot together and make it look pretty good for most of the year. This is our first project – I’m going shopping next week if the PSA give me the green light.


Finally – the bit everyone’s getting excited about. All the kids in the school, from 4-year-olds in reception to the big girls and boys in Year 6, are being given a design project in which they’re going to be asked to come up with loads of imaginative designs, from which we’ll select as much inspiration as we can cram in without making it too overcrowded. From this we’ll create our Kitchen Garden. The hedge behind it (a mixed wildlife hedge around the pond) is coming down by about half, which is a huge job for November, but I’m trying not to think about that too much: instead looking forward to lots of colourful drawings and some seriously good ideas!

Trimming to size

27 Friday Apr 2007

Posted by sallynex in pond, pruning, wildlife gardening

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Tags

mahonia, school garden

Back to the monster mahonia again yesterday – I came to the conclusion that I’d see what happened after I’d done some restorative pruning (i.e. thinning out the very congested centre, removing crossing branches and so on).

Luckily that did take the height down a bit and what with a few judicious cuts which removed the remainder of the really tall bits, I managed to take about 5ft off the top without actually changing the shape of the tree much. I also had a lot of fun climbing about in the canopy – it doesn’t take much to get me up clambering about in trees!

Result is a happy client – he got his view back – and happy me, having preserved a very special plant. I’ve revised my opinion of mahonias and will be recommending them as an unusual architectural plant to designers – but as 20ft trees, not the modest little specimens you see in most gardens.

One other thing – I have for my sins agreed to take over running the garden at my local primary school. Why is it we gardeners are such suckers for co-opting more things to grow and spaces to grow them in? Hopefully I can delegate a lot of the work to other parents – but I have to confess, I’m secretly quite excited about this little pond area they have there, which I plan to make into a fantastic little wildlife garden. Minibeast heaven. More later…

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