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| View of newly planted wildflower meadow, with hedge now starting to grow and lawn laid! |
As the weather has improved, Acomb's community garden is starting to take shape as you can see in the photos here. Many hands made light work of planting a variety of flower seeds in the wildflower meadow on Seed Sowing Saturday in April, while leaves are appearing along the lines of veg (supplemented by any unsold plants from the church plant sale on 9th May, which raised a fantastic £850 for the charity Madalitso in Malawi - more on their stories here).
A couple of new fruit trees have been planted along the boundary fence which will soon come into leaf (though we'll be lucky if we get any fruit this year). A generous gift of turf has meant that Janette now has a good lawn within her new hedge (where a large patch of brambles once stood!) Apart from that, the patient work of weeding and digging continues, with a growing pile of bricks and other obstructions removed from the soil. It has been a very dry spring, so the garden team has been popping round at regular intervals to water different sections of the garden, especially to encourage areas of new planting (our best protection against weeds is vigilance and planting things we WANT to grow in their place!)
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| Large areas of the garden have now been dug over and planted (though there's still plenty of weeding to do!) |
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| Tulips with a view of the castle |
The walled garden is just below the castle (an excellent attraction in its own right, which I explored with my friend Hannah last year). It originally supplied the kitchens of Duncombe House, then was a market garden until 1984 when it was abandoned. After a decade of neglect, the garden was rediscovered in 1994 by a mental health nurse who dreamed of restoring the garden as a means of helping people recover. Therapeutic gardening is an idea which York NHS also put to good use at the Poppleton Railway Nursery (as I've written about here).
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| Fruit trees and gooseberry bushes along the back wall of the garden |
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| Well-placed reeds, hedges and gateways divide the garden into different spaces including this "quiet" garden and a physic garden (as recommended by John Wesley!) |
We particularly liked the way that the garden had a variety of different "rooms" with space for contemplation as well as play, and occasional interpretation boards explain some of the principles in use for organic, wildlife-friendly gardening (while still battling the perennial weeds!)
There is also an allotment area outside the main garden tended by a local school - like Edible York's work in schools across the city, they have found that one of the best ways to connect people to valuing the natural world is through food!
The garden is a charity and social enterprise supported by entrance fees to the garden, selling some of their plants and veg at a well stocked garden center and a cafe full of vines, where we tried to drink enough coffee to make a decent contribution to the charity on our visit despite our free entry... At the end of a beautiful afternoon, a number of people had to head home but there were still 18 of us for fish and chips (becoming something of a recurring theme in our garden exploits! Community is built best over food, right?)
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