Tag: garden sheds

Developing 3 new spaces – Part 2 – the new roof garden

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date October 9, 2017
2 Comments on Developing 3 new spaces – Part 2 – the new roof garden

The final new garden we developed early in 2017 was our second roof garden here at Avocet. To find out about our first green roof refer to my post called “Growing up! Making a green roof.” published back in April 2013.

This, our second roof garden, was created when we got rid of one of our garden sheds and moved a smaller one into its place. (see the post entitled “Three Sheds into Two will Go”)

We constructed a strong framework around the shed in timber so that the roof garden itself was putting no extra stress on the shed roof itself. We then added a new floor to the roof garden from strong floorboards which we waterproofed with two layers of roofing felt. In order to make it ready for the planting media we added a layer of weed membrane to allow for drainage and to retain the compost. We created a drainage channel filled with gravel. The final stage of preparation was adding a layer of light weight compost which was carefully leveled.

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Time to plant! It always seems strange planting when up a ladder!

The green roof is the exciting finishing point in our shed project. The first phase of planting really made us feel as if we had completed our work with the three sheds, which had now been turned into two! The plants were a selection of grasses, Incinia rubra, a selection of Carex and Stipa tenuissima but more will follow soon. Flowering plants included a selection of small Sedums, Sedum tricolor, S. telephinium ss riprechtii “Hab Gray”, S. ewersii and S. cauticola Coca Cola plus two scented Violas, V. odorata sulphurea and V. odorata Konigin Charlotte, a low growing Sedum-like plant Chiastophyllum opositifolium and a variegated Trifolium, T. pratense “Susan Smith”.

Job done!

Tags garden design, garden diy, garden sheds, grasses, green roof, ornamental grasses, roof gardening, roof gardens, thymes, violas

garden sheds

3 sheds into 2 will go!

Changes in circumstances can result in changes happening in the garden too! When I had to give up angling because of health issues we found ourselves with a storage shed we no longer required, the one that had stored my fishing gear. All together at that time we had 3 sheds but hoped to reduce their number.

The old fishing shed was restored, re-roofed and shelves were added to store our garden gear tidily. The old garden store was demolished, and discovered several brightly striped hibernating queen wasps between layers of roofing felt.

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In its place we erected the old shed moved from the Shade Garden. It was in need of plenty of remedial work and some added tlc.

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It was treated to a new floor and roof.

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It would soon be boasting a roof garden planted up with small grasses, perennials and herbs to attract wildlife and for us to appreciate. (see specific post)

Tags garden furniture, garden sheds

allotments community gardening garden buildings Shropshire

Celebrating Autumn at the Allotment

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date November 11, 2015
2 Comments on Celebrating Autumn at the Allotment

As many of you will already know we celebrate every season at our allotments, Bowbrook Allotment Community, so recently it was the turn of Autumn which we linked with Halloween. We want to make children aware of the seasons, how each is different, how they are part of a cycle and we want to emphasize seasonality. This is easy on an allotment site where we harvest fresh fruit and veg all year round . It is also the time of year when we cut our wildflower meadows. This is a job done by families or small groups and once they are cut it takes a while to get used to their short hair cuts. We are sowing the semi-parasitic wildflower, Yellow Rattle, in some of our meadows. This useful little plant is an attractive yellow flowered native plant which parasitises on the roots of the tougher species of grasses which means there is less competition for our wild flowers.

At our Autumn Celebration we invited members to take part in a competition to decorate their sheds following the theme of Halloween. Our judge enjoyed the experience even though it was a long job.

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One couple and their daughter decorated their plot and spread the ghosts across into the nearby tree. It looked great!

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Our tea committee were in attendance providing hot drinks and cakes. They even decorated their tea shop. One of the committee, Tracy, made toffee apples using apples from our community orchards. These proved most popular. Once it got dark we lit the barbeque and we all cooked our food on it We also lit our fire pits so we had the inviting aromas of wood smoke and BBQ cooking.

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This year we decided to invite everyone, children and adults to dress up in appropriate gear. Jude and I joined in as a witch and Dracula which upset some of the youngest children who didn’t like us looking like that. The first picture below shows us in our costumes.

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We held a competition for carved pumpkin lanterns and both children and adults took part. Liz, a committee member, organised fun games for the youngsters, which as always were very popular and played with the sound of laughter.

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When Darkness fell we lit the lamps, lit the candles in the pumpkin lanterns and took off for a walk around the site with the lit pumpkin lanterns to show the way. The children loved walking in the dark with their lanterns and visiting all the spooky sheds lit up. Some adults stayed to enjoy coffees around the fire pits.

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And a great time was had by all! Lots of members during the evening asked when our next celebration was. It will be our Winter/Christmas Celebrations. That will be a future post.

Tags autumn, Bowbrook Allotment Community, celebrations, comm, communal gardens, community, community gardening, garden sheds, Halloween, sheds

allotments community gardening Shrewsbury Shropshire

Three Crazy Days at the Allotments – Part 2

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date October 28, 2014

Welcome back to part two of my “Three Crazy Days at the Allotments” series of posts and in this one we are celebrating Halloween. We do this every year as it is a good excuse to have a BBQ, make our sheds look weird and to get together socially before the weather changes.

This year we decided to hold competitions for preserves, the weirdest vegetables, the best carved pumpkin lanterns and also invited members to decorate their sheds so that we could find one suitable to be hailed “The Spookiest Shed”. We set the afternoon and evening going with games for the children.

Our members had been so busy beforehand and the judges had a hard time selecting winners in all the competitions. The photos below shows the table where members dropped off their entries into the preserves and weird veggies competitions.

The competitions were judged as the BBQ was warming up. In the first photo one of our members, who likes to be known as Mrs Anna, is judging the Pumpkin Lantern competition. As you can see there were some very imaginative ideas. To her left is one of our youngest allotment members Edward, who danced his way through the afternoon but found a few moments to help our judge out. He did have to stop now and again for a rest and an occasional snooze. Pumpkins appeared all over the site – one member even decorated her compost heap with lots of small pumpkins. And of course Mrs Anna was appropriately dressed as one when she carried out her judging.

The tea shop awaited its first customers, as in the background members can be seen arriving. The communal huts were decorated to welcome everyone. As well as all the children who dressed up many adults joined in. It took a long time for us to work out who the ghost was!

I went round for a quick look at the Spooky Sheds while it was still just about light, to find so many different ideas.

The winning shed was this one which was decorated around every side of the shed itself, across the bench and down the plot to where the skeleton was rising out of the ground. On another plot a hand with one finger missing was rising from a plant pot.

One plot holder managed to co-ordinate her decoration with the berries of the Firethorn climbing up her shed. In another shed we found a witch had set up home!

As with all our seasonal celebrations we found time for a BBQ. As the light continued to fade we “sparked up” our seasonal lamps. Glowing skulls!

Some members took the chance to get dressed for the occasion. Here is Liz, our youngest committee member and Wendy who is one of our founder members.

Wendy has formed our tea committee with her neighbouring plot holder Dee and we can see them here enjoying their BBQ while taking a break from their tea and coffee making duties.

As the light faded, the children were getting increasingly excited in anticipation of the usual finale to out Halloween celebrations, our walkabout with our pumpkin lanterns. We trailed around the site looking at all the decorated sheds. One plot holder had even left a big tray of sweets on the bench for the wanderers. We were joined on our walk by real bats flying about our heads.

So one day we were celebrating the success of Shrewsbury in the Britain in Bloom awards and our essential role in it and the next we were letting our hair down and celebrating Halloween. Crazy lot really! It just shows how much fun gardening can be.

In the third and final post in this series about our allotments we found ourselves back there on day 3 and back in work mode.