A busy November!

At this time of year we are preparing our gardens for the winter and ensuring a good start to the New Year.

In the Community Garden and at the Community Hall our volunteers have been very busy. We have been adding a compost mulch to the flower beds. This is heavy work but good exercise and hopefully the plants will reap the benefits and put on a good show for us all next year.

The Fairfield Scouts planted the remaining 300 daffodil bulbs into the Community Hall flower beds – they did a super job and we can look forward to the results in the early spring.

In our Community Garden the WI planted a Memorial Tree on the weekend of Remembrance Day and the Community Garden volunteers have developed a new flower bed to complement the tree.

It’s a good time for planting bare root roses in our gardens and we have taken the opportunity to plant new roses in the Community Garden and the Community Hall, including in the new flower bed. Roses are always a good option, once established they cope well with most conditions and are long lasting. The Community Garden has beautiful repeat flowering, multi petal, scented roses and for the Community Hall we have gone for equally lovely and repeat flowering simpler single flower varieties. Now we just have to be patient until they begin flowering next year.

At home I have been sowing some of the seeds that I have collected from my own plants and some I have purchased. It’s a good time for sowing sweet peas. Mine have gone in – I keep them on a windowsill in the house until they have germinated and then they can go outside into a cold frame. I have also sown Dianthus, Penstemmon, Verbena and Dwarf Snapdragon from seeds I have collected. This is an experiment, but I’ll let you know how I get on. Hopefully I will have some young plants for the Fairfield seeds and cuttings swap club (see facebook) when it starts again next year.

If you are interested in getting involved in community gardening please contact me at gardening@ fairfieldorganisations.org.uk.

Sara Chick, It’s Your Neighbourhood Coordinator