Category: recycling

A Week of Culture – Part One – Hardwick Hall

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date February 6, 2014
4 Comments on A Week of Culture – Part One – Hardwick Hall

We spent a few cold January days up in Derbyshire and Yorkshire for a culture fix. It was extremely cold and occasional rain and hail storms lashed us but we did not give in. We bravely went onward defying whatever the weather threw at us and enjoyed every moment. Day one of our winter adventure found us stopping off in Derbyshire at Hardwick Hall for a spot of architecture appreciation.

Although the day was a memorable one, not all the memories were happy ones as my trusty friend my Nikon DSLR packed up and it did not allow me to focus or use flash so it is now being looked at in the camera hospital at Nikon UK. Fingers crossed for a speedy recovery. Isn’t it devastating when your camera goes awry? So all the pics following are taken on my Samsung Galaxy Phone, which does have a quality camera, thank goodness.

The grounds of Hardwick Hall , now under the auspices of the National Trust, is unusual in having two “big houses”. The newer hall was built in the late 1500’s by Bess of Hardwick, a powerful woman at a time when powerful women were few and far between. She wanted everyone to now how important she was hence the size of Hardwick. She features her initials all over the building including huge letters along the top of the building The letter E refers to her name Elizabeth and the S refers to Shrewsbury. She married George Talbot who was the Earl of Shrewsbury at the time making Bess Countess of Shrewsbury. No-one could have visited this place when she was there without knowing how powerful she was.

From the rear gardens we were able to appreciate close views of the heritage cattle, the Shorthorns.

The gardens are small but the parklands are impressive and extensive. A range of buildings once stable blocks, workers’ cottages and workshops have been lovingly restored and put to good use as holiday cottages, shop, restaurant etc.

Signs of a recent den building activity day for children were in evidence in the grassed area enclosed by the stable block buildings, as were wood sculptures celebrating the skills of the craftsmen who would have helped to maintain the grounds at Hardwick. The carvings were created from trees that had been felled due to disease. Even the tables and chairs in one of the buildings celebrated the work of the estate millers.

We were highly impressed by the “green credentials” of the building revamp and felt it needed celebrating. Well done to the National Trust! As well as excellent insulation there are several innovative ideas in action. Water collected from the roofs is used to flush toilets, solar panels on the roofs pre-heats water to be used in the kitchen, heat generated by the condensers of the fridges and freezers is collected and the boiler is of a bio-mass type.

The more formal gardens are enclosed areas snuggly fitted close to the house surrounded by tall hedges so that each area is a surprise to the visitor. Some beautiful coppicing work in “The Nuttery” was evidence of the skilled gardeners here now. The trees here are Hazels, their prunings providing brash stacks for wildlife shelters.

We discovered some beautifully and skillfully trained and pruned plants, a rose and some Yew which brought a smile to our faces. It was cold day so a smile was most welcome! Just after taking these photos the sky turned black with heavy storm clouds, the temperature dropped, the wind speed increased and we were attacked by a ferocious hail storm. We took shelter in the entrance to the hall where I took these photos some showing the wet glossy paths to illustrate how wet it was.

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After sheltering out the time of the storm we looked for architectural details of the building and discovered these gems.

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So let us have a look at a few shots of the “new” hall before we explore the old hall.

As we approached the old hall, which was the family home of Bess, our first view was in silhouette. As we moved around the building the detail revealed itself.

As we passed through the gateway we came across this piece of stonework. We had no idea what it was but were interested to find another set of Bess’ initials. You can just about see them if you look really carefully.

A close up look around the tall walls of the old hall showed how beautiful it must have been. It had a certain beauty even in decay.

We were drawn to the signs of old plaster work hanging on the inside walls.

Many old windows and doors had been filled in at various times and this resulted in what appeared as framed textured paintings. Beautiful!

As we walked away from the old hall I looked back and took this shot of it as the sky cleared and the sun returned.

As we returned to the car park the sun was setting behind the tall trees alongside the path showing just how long we had been discovering the delights of the old halls at Hardwick. We also came across this stone sculpture based on seeds found in the grounds.

We travelled further North and made our way out of Derbyshire into Yorkshire where we stayed a few days in Wakefield. Here we would experience more of our culture fixes.

Tags Derbyshire, garden photography, Hardwick Hall. architecture, National Trust, outdoor sculpture, sculpture, winter gardens

garden design gardening gardens recycling

An Ugly Duckling

Remember the story of “The Ugly Duckling” one of the Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales, also a children’s song sung by Danny Kaye? We used to listen to that song on the radio when we were kids growing up in the 50’s on a programme called “Children’s Favourites”. Well, this post reminds me of it!

The least favourite part of our garden which we inherited when we first moved into our Plealey home ten years ago, is the central concrete pathway in the back garden. It consisted of a row of 3 feet by 2 feet concrete slabs with a concrete border each side about 9 inches wide. It looked so ugly, dull and grey!

We decided to take up every other slab and replace them with purple slate. This was hard work as the slabs were 2 inches thick concrete and were very close together making leverage more difficult than we had anticipated. Where there were any spaces between them these had been filled with mortar. So it took a while to lever up each slab with a spade. We then “walked ” them onto a porters trolley to take them away.

We put weed suppressing membrane down and topped it up with a good deep layer of slate.

We have always wanted to get rid of it or at least change its look. We have at last got round to doing it. It was hard work but it gave us something creative to do on a cold day when the ground was too wet to work on.

One of the added bonuses of using any form of slate in the garden is the fact that it features different colours depending on whether it is wet or dry. The slate was wet when we put it down so in the above photos the slate is purple-black in colour and deeply glossy, but when dry it goes much paler almost white with just a hint of grey and is matt in texture.

So, there we have it the ugly duckling of a concrete path – turned into the beautiful swan – the new path of alternating slate and slab. We were pleased that we had managed to do this using recycled or re-used materials. The slabs were obviously our own and the slate came from the waste heaps of the old Welsh slate mines. These come from the waste heaps which until recently had no use whatsoever and they were a blot on the landscape of Snowdonia.

A good days work! An attractive new garden feature, reusing our old slabs and bringing in just one new material and that was a quarrying industry by-product.

Tags garden design, garden paths, garden photography, re-use, recycling, slate, Snowdonia

allotments autumn community gardening diy garden buildings garden wildlife gardening gardens Land Art natural pest control recycling Shrewsbury wildlife

Pumpkins, a BBQ and Homes for Wildlife

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date November 5, 2013
5 Comments on Pumpkins, a BBQ and Homes for Wildlife

At the end of October we held our first ever family oriented working party social day at our allotments, Bowbrook Allotment Community. It was a great success even though the whole day was spent in wellies and waterproofs. The ground beneath our feet was saturated and occasional showers got us from above, but neither distracted us from our aims of the day.

We started just after one o’clock when a photographer from the local newspaper came to take some shots of families working together on our “Homes for Wildlife” projects and one of our most recent award, the RHS Britain in Bloom “National Award of Distinction” which we were awarded for our community involvement.

First task was to make some birdboxes and Wren Pouches. All the materials were collected together by one of our picnic benches and tools readied. It was heartening to see children, their parents and grandparents working together creating these nest boxes. Three generations together!

We made some hanging bug shelters too, created from broken flower pots, driftwood and bits of bark.

We wished also to make a couple of bug hotels, a small one along the fenceline and our most ambitious yet a 6 ft high creepy crawly cottage both based on recycled wooden pallets. We began with a stack of pallets and a collection of natural objects collected by allotment holders, sticks, old garden canes, stones, fir cones etc.

The “cottage” soon began to take shape as pallets were stacked and fixed together to give the basic structure.

All we have to do now is choose a name for our new insect home. We have challenged the youngsters from the allotments, our Roots and Shoots group, to choose a suitable one. So far we have a few ideas – “Minibeast Manor”, “Bugtique Hotel” and “Minibeast Metropolis”. The difficulty will be how to decide!

The smaller insect hotel was made from five pallets and again filled with objects that would provide shelter for wildlife. We finished it off with a stone pile, the perfect home for beetles.

The final jobs before our BBQ was to plant lots of acorns, sweet chestnuts and hazel nuts to grow on and plant in our hedgerows and to plant up a whole sack of daffodil bulbs alongside the paths in our meadows.

The BBQ brought us all back together and once darkness fell we lit our pumpkin lanterns. And we even found time for Jude to do some face painting.

As we enjoyed the BBQ the light disappeared and we prepared ourselves for the Twilight Walk, when we wandered around the site with lit pumpkins to light our way in search of sheds decorated as Spooky Sheds.

And as the night fell we disappeared into the gloom with our pumpkins to guide our way.

Tags allotments, bird boxes, Bowbrook Allotments, community gardening, garden wildlife, Halloween, insect homes, insects, organic gardening, outdoor sculpture, pumpkins, wildlife, wildlife shelters

allotments fruit and veg garden wildlife gardening grow your own kitchen gardens recycling

Trench Composting

Trench composting is an underused way to improve your soil texture and add fertility to your soil. And it has the added bonus of getting rid of those tough old stems of spent sunflowers, sweetcorn and brassicas. We spent a day trench composting the quarter of our allotment in which we shall be growing our roots next year. Many books tell us not to add manure or humus to the patch where you are planning to grow your root crops but we have found by experience that if the trenching is carried out in early autumn it works just fine. As the depth of soil on our plot is less than a border fork deep we need to keep adding to it in an attempt to build up some depth.

The job gets started as Jude, aka Mrs Greenbench or The Undergardener, takes out a 2 foot wide trench down to the hard layer of boulder clay. I then follow on with the rotovator breaking up this hard packed layer of clay and large pebbles. It makes the rotovator work hard and it jumps and lurches around at the bottom of the trench. By doing this we hope to gain depth and let worms and other creatures of the soil work in the humus we will be adding. While the rotovator turns up the stones and pebbles we collect them up to use as a stonepile, a beetle shelter. The beetles are useful predators who will help in our pest control.

Green waste from the spent crops on the plot are then placed all along the bottom of the trench, with the tougher material needing chopping with a sharp stainless steel spade. Even the toughest of green waste such as brassica stalks, sunflower stems and sweetcorn stalks will break down in the depths of the trench. We also add shredded paper (only non-glossy), torn card board and lawn mowings.

To further improve soil texture and add more nutrient value we mix in a barrow load of quality farmyard manure.We find this encourages the soil critters to get going.

To finish Jude replaces the soil over the top of the material in the trench and as a final touch we add a thick mulch of farmyard manure.

We then hand the trench with its added ingredients over to the creatures of the soil. When we trench again in a few years time all that material will have totally broken down.

We carry on by digging out another trench alongside the first and keep moving over the area until it has all been trenched. We have our plot divided into four sections to allow for crop rotation so we trench one or two sections each year. This method of composting is a very efficient way of recycling green waste including the tough materials often thrown in refuse bins. Plants grown in the richly textured and nutrient rich soil will grow strongly and therefore be healthier so will be better able to cope with attacks from pests and diseases.

Tags allotments, composting, fruit and vegetable growing, grown your own, natural pest control, organic gardening

garden design garden photography garden wildlife gardening gardens open to the public grasses hardy perennials meadows natural pest control ornamental trees and shrubs recycling walled gardens wildlife

Boughton House – The Gardens

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date September 15, 2013
9 Comments on Boughton House – The Gardens

Back to Boughton as promised and this time we are off to the more intimate gardens closer to the house. These contrast strongly with the large scale landscaping with the huge land forms.

Refreshed with a good coffee and a slice of lemon drizzle cake from the restaurant in the stableyard we wandered off to the walled garden.

On the way we passed through a couple of old gates, presenting an odd juxtaposition with one so grand and one rather normal. Finding an old orchard was an unexpected pleasure. The old apple trees are being sensitively renewed through careful and very skillful pruning.

The gateway that led to the walled garden was most welcoming and we accepted readily its generous invitation to enter.

And what a sight met our eyes! The area enclosed by the old honey-coloured stone walls was far larger than we expected and contained a sensory garden, a wildlife garden, herbaceous borders and old greenhouses surrounded by interesting plantings in a selection of eclectic containers.

The garden designed to attract wildlife contained some interesting insect shelters and great plants for beneficial “critters”. We were most impressed by the insect home called “Creepy Crawly Cottage and the impressive bird bath.

The old gardeners’ bothy was full of character. I loved the bell!

At the far end of the walled garden the sensory garden satisfied our noses with sweet herby scents.

I shall finish this report on Boughton with a couple of interesting features that caught my eye throughout the garden.

Tags apples, garden photography, gardening, insects, meadows, organic gardening, wildlife

garden design garden photography gardening outdoor sculpture recycling Shropshire succulents wise watering

A Ladder Garden

Our garden is too full – we have nowhere left to grow the plants we keep finding and wanting to take under our gardening wings. So we need ideas for more gardens. We are going up!

Take an old rickety wooden ladder, too old and battered to trust. We cut it in half and fixed it against the sides of two of our sheds.

We found this strange collection of objects at various interesting outlets nearby. Two French wire baskets, a cast iron drain pipe top and a kettle used by gypsies to boil water over open fires.

And now for the planting! We need plants that require little looking after and won’t be constantly calling out to be watered. Succulents are the answer.

A little job well done I think! A little bit of garden sculpture. Some recycling and some re-using. Now we can just enjoy them as we pass by or visit the sheds.