Happy New Year and Pod Meetup!
Hello to all our new subscribers!
Hello all and thank you for subscribing to the first edition of our newsletter, ‘The Wild Garden’.
First things first, happy new year to you all! It’s been a dreich start to the season here in Nottingham, so we are hunkered down at home to toast in 2023 with a bottle of fizz and a bag of chips. The fizz is far too good for the likes of us, it was a Christmas tip!
These newsletters will be a chance for us to share what we’ve been up to over the past month and to advertise exciting upcoming events, like our first ever podcast meetup…
Winter garden meetup
On Sunday 26th February we will be visiting the fabulous winter garden at Sir Harold Hillier Gardens in Hampshire and you are invited! The garden is world renowned for its breadth of planting which brightens up even the darkest winter days. We will meet at 10:30am by the visitors centre, just inside the garden, come rain or shine. You know what faces to look for from the photo above!
The meetup is simply a chance to visit a beautiful garden in the company of you lovely listeners. No need to sign up in advance, just pay your entry into the garden on the day. Good news is that RHS members get free entry through the partner programme in February, and Gardeners World magazine subscribers get 2-for-1 entry with their discount card. Full details can be found on the website Tickets and prices | Hampshire County Council (hants.gov.uk)
As this is our first meetup, we are making things as simple as possible. Make your own arrangements for food and drink; there are plenty of options on site or you can bring a pack up. After a few hours in the winter garden we will stop for lunch, then wander around the rest of the site in the afternoon. Whether you stick with us or go your own way is up to you.
We have no idea how many of you will join us, but everyone is welcome! For full details of directions, pricing, disability access and more, visit the website here Sir Harold Hillier Gardens | Hampshire County Council (hants.gov.uk)
We’re really looking forward to it. And if you need some inspiration for winter planting in your garden, check out the latest episode of the podcast here:
A Naked Pair
We’re often asked: ‘What do gardeners do in winter?’. The answer of course is that we get dressed and go to work! There are loads of jobs for this time of year. Winter is the time to prune your deciduous trees and climbers, and to plant new trees too. Bareroot trees tend to take better, are cheaper than potted and are available in a much wider selection. If you think it’s too cold to go out, take a leaf from our book and watch us get dressed for winter from the skin up (just click the image).
A changing climate
Things are definitely changing in our gardens. We were shocked this week to spot a Hummingbird Hawk Moth in one of the gardens we maintain, feeding on Mahonia x media. The sighting generated some excitement amongst the moth lovers out there, even though it is a worrying sign of the warmer winters we are experiencing year after year. The question is: is this a migrant from Europe brought in by the warmer air, or an individual that is overwintering? We hope to have an answer for you in the next episode!
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The next newsletter
That’s it for this edition of ‘The Wild Garden’. We plan to develop the newsletter as we go, eventually adding in seasonal wildlife gardening tips and bonus material for paid subscribers. The next newsletter will be in early February with a reminder of the meetup. In the January episode of the podcast, we are reading ‘The Garden Jungle’ by Professor Dave Goulson, and you might even hear a few minutes of audio from the man himself!
Happy new year to you all.
Ellie and Ben