The 2.5 acre site at Bell House provides the garden team with plenty of scope to create a range of habitats for wildlife and different garden spaces for visitors and volunteers.
Work began in the autumn to create a series of new flower beds around the main lawn to be filled with plants for pollinators. Paths will take visitors through drifts of bulbs, perennials, grasses and shrubs chosen to provide pollen, nectar and interest through the year. Volunteers will learn to grow the plants from seed, cuttings and small plugs, potted out and brought on in the polytunnel. Hornbeam and yew hedges will frame the beds, providing a backdrop to the planting and a shelter point for birds foraging in the garden. Lavender will surround the terrace to bring colour, scent and attract pollinators.
A new native hedge will be planted in the Pickwick garden, with willows and Dogwoods to soak up the ground water. The plants are part of a grant awarded by The Tree Council to support community engagement, enhance wildlife and education around on-going care.
Parts of the Pickwick garden are very wet after the winter, so swales will be dug to allow water to collect naturally, creating temporary lagoons now and sunny hollows in the yearsummer. Soil removed will be left exposed as banks for mining bees to tunnel and nest.
The Bell House honeybees are now settled in a new apiary under an oak tree surrounded by a low log wall built by the volunteers. All fallen branches and cuttings are kept on site and added to log piles, the dead hedges and stumpery. The stumpery, where logs are stood, half buried in the soil, was built by three volunteers one Saturday and will be a valuable resource for beetles, woodlice, wood wasps and other insects who need deadwood for survival.
In the walled garden the vegetable beds have been mulched and weeded ready for this year’s growing season. Two new apple trees, a morello cherry and mulberry have been planted in the orchard. Each has been chosen by our visiting orchard expert to cross-pollinate with our existing trees and be resistant to disease. Heritage varieties were chosen, which could have been planted by the Victorian owners when the new servants’ wing was added to the house.
Come and see the garden and our plans for 2024 on the first Saturday of every month, 11.30pm to 1.00am.
Tickets for the Easter Open Garden: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bell-house-open-garden-tickets-254615781657
If you’re interested in volunteering in the garden: https://www.bellhouse.co.uk/volunteering?mc_cid=d3b7a446cf