This week’s selection of six garden things on Saturday begins with a red admiral butterfly on a buddleia. When the sun shines, this butterfly bush by the kitchen window really lives up to it’s name.

Next up, a white tailed bumblebee on a fuchsia. The fuchsia by the bench under the apple tree is a mature and well established plant, about two metres wide, and on sunny days it is usually buzzing with bees. Bonus point if you spot the spider.

A third thing that I wanted to share is the view from the back steps to the garden. The new handrail is beautiful bit of ironwork that was recycled from a local church. We’ve chosen a lot of black metal finishes for our garden furniture over the past 15 years or so, which has given the space some sort of cohesion.

There’s a bright pink hydrangea in bloom, in a spot where it was previously overgrown and hadn’t flowered.

In fact, there are several hydrangeas in the garden, emerging from the overgrowth.

The one behind the pond has a nice dusty lilac tone, and works well with the copper coloured acer ‘Palmatum Bloodgud’ and the bright red lobelia (possibly variety ‘Queen Victoria’)

The ‘mystery’ hydrangea from the ‘mystery plant sale’ at Mells Walled Garden this spring turns out to be a rather fabulous fuchsia pink colour.

A usual, I’ve lost count of my garden things. Here’s my final thing, a snap of the teeny acorns forming on the Holm Oak, at the bottom of the garden.

This big, brilliant evergreen oak tree is Quercus ilex.

This huge holm oak tree isn’t actually in our garden, but it dominates the view. I gather it’s called ‘borrowed landscape.’ when your garden benefits from a neighbouring plant. This oak has a large wisteria which has wound its way to the very top, an escapee from the hedgerow.

That’s it for this week, except to say that if you happen to be an administrative professional based in Frome, Somerset, who could to join Shared Earth Learning Forest School as our admin support on a permanent, part-time basis, please visit our blog to find out more about joining our team.

https://sharedearthlearning.blogspot.com/2021/08/job-opportunity-part-time.html

If you’re aged 18-35 based in or near Frome, and not in education or training, you could join a project with Edventure and Shared Earth Learning to set up a new permaculture venture to provide jobs and training for young people, click here for more info

If you’re neither of the above, but would like to support the work of Shared Earth Learning forest school to nurture a love of the natural world, you can donate to support our work here. We recently converted Shared Earth Learning Forest School from a not-for-profit limited company run as a co-op, into a Charitable Benefit Society. This means we are officially constituted for the benefit of our community, and you can be sure that any funds you donate will go towards delivering and expanding our work to help the most disadvantaged in our community access the health and wellbeing benefits of being in nature.

Whatever you’re up to this week I hope your plans go well.

Jen x