7th May - Making a Bog Garden

Today we started to dig over a grassy area near the pond - this will eventually become our wildflower and wild-grass area.  

The irises are coming up in the pond.  We also put some tadpoles into the pond.  We are a bit worried that our resident ducks will eat all the tadpoles, so one of the students came up with the idea that we should keep some in a container inside and watch them change into frogs.

Our poly-tunnel frame was kindly put together over the weekend by our friends from the Shiremoor Allotment Association.  It is looking great and we can finally get an idea of what our garden will look like.

Last week the students put together a strawberry barrel.  Today they planted the barrel with some young strawberry plants.

Sarah from the RHS was on-hand today to show us how to construct a bog-garden next to our pond.

Firstly we dug a hole in the soil, making a pile of the soil we took out of the ground.

We used some of the off-cuts from the pond liner to make the hole less able to freely drain the water away.  Bog garden plants like a wet environment, but not so wet like the pond.  Sarah showed the students how to cut several holes into the liner, so that some of the water will drain away.

Here are some of the plants which we were going to put into the bog-garden.

A layer of gravel was put down on top of the liner, this will make sure the roots of the plants do not get too wet.

Soil was then shoveled back on top of the gravel.

We decided where to plant each plant by placing it on top of the soil before a hole was dug to put the plant into.

Here is our finished bog garden, which one of our students soaked with a hose to make sure all the plants had a good drink.

Here are some hanging baskets which were planted up yesterday with tomatoes and basil.

The greenhouse also got a good tidy and is looking very organised - especially with its new path made from some of our donated gravel..

Some of the tyres which were decorated by year 8, have been planted with potatoes. 

We have a lot of young plants hardening off outside in a series of cold frames - just getting ready to plant out.  The RHS sunflower seeds which were planted last week have already germinated.

Some pumpkin plants hardening off in a cold frame.

Our spring flower bed is still looking lovely, some of the wildflower seeds we sowed a couple of weeks ago are starting to germinate.  We are struggling to be able to tell them from the weeds though!

Here are a couple of our lovely double tulips.

We are starting putting a little willow fence around our fruit area - we are having a go at just looping and planting some of the willow which was left over from the willow sculpture.