News and events from Upton Nature Garden

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400 ways to celebrate spring – UPDATED

UPDATE, Saturday 12 March, 1.25pm

All the plants are in! Thanks to another terrific show of volunteer support all the new perennials are settling into their new environment. Apologies to anyone who was thinking of coming along later – we’d love to see you another time.

Exciting news just in: the next order of plants for the nature garden has arrived (from Bampton, west of Oxford – we keep it local if we can). This time it’s a bumper batch of more than 400 perennials, including honeysuckle, foxgloves, ferns, yarrow, bugloss and meadow crane’s bill.

We’d really appreciate your help getting these lovelies safely stowed in the soil. You can volunteer on Saturday March 12 and Sunday March 11 from 10 am.

Bring a trowel – bring a friend! If they need persuading, tell them there’ll be cake and a brew. And if that doesn’t work, mention that they’ll get their name in lights. By which we mean the tireless glow of the LEDs that illuminate our virtual roll of honour.

The aim is to get everything bedded in by 4pm, but there may be overspill into Sunday – please check back here or the Upton village Facebook page for updates.

This is the last big push to get the greenery in the garden established, coupled with wildflower seed-sowing next month.

After that there’s a new gate and a sign to install, and the garden will be ready to receive visitors! Obviously it’ll take a while for the plants to get established, but there are already bulbs poking through and buds on the hedging plants.

Another welcome sighting earlier this month was a mistle thrush chortling in the chestnut. I’m told one of its nicknames is the ‘stormcock’ because it starts trying to pair up before winter is properly over. It’s on the British Trust for Ornithology’s red list of birds of conservation concern, so let’s hope it finds the food and habitat it needs locally.

Bumper crop of volunteers for the Treebilee

News

Whether spurred on by Prince Charles’ rallying cry or not, Upton came out in force to plant up the nature garden on Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 January.

There was a brilliant atmosphere as everyone got stuck into digging, barrowing and tucking in our new shrubs, trees and hedges. It might take a little imagination to picture the results of our labours just yet, but we completed the plan to:

restore the hedge at the top of the bank by the road
create an edible hedge of berry- and nut-bearing species to separate the meadow from the glade
establish a tiny orchard with apple, pear, mulberry, crab apple, cherry and wild service
populate the woodland with shrubs
install a new native hedge between the nature garden and rec

No mean feat! (but some very muddy boots.) Have a look at Kathryn’s pics in the gallery to see the results.

Volunteers, take a bough

Thanks to our 30+ volunteers (including plenty of doughties who gave up time on both Saturday and Sunday) we exceeded expectations – about 500 plants are now settling into their new home. See the roll of honour for the full list of volunteers.

This follows work done on previous volunteer weekends when we prepared the site, erected fencing and planted bulbs. Thanks to all who pitched in on those occasions.

We also had some kind donations to help establish the nature garden as a des-res for wildlife:

a deluxe hedgehog house from William Lott
a birdbox from Frances Telling

Your next volunteering opportunity

We’re hoping to place an order for perennials in the coming weeks. If you’d like to join in planting foxgloves, honeysuckle, ferns, hellebores and more, please join the mailing list.

Newsflash! Planting event on December 11 and 12 postponed

News

Sorry everyone, plants still haven’t been despatched from the supplier so we’re unable to go ahead with the volunteer weekend on 11 and 12 December. We’ll hold off setting a new date until we get delivery, but it’ll be some time in the New Year.

Apologies if you’d set time aside for this. Apparently the cause is the mild autumn which prevented the plants becoming dormant at the usual time.

For some reason these problems didn’t affect The Woodland Trust quite as badly. It was able to supply whips to us, so Upton’s cemetery extension has got a new hedge thanks to a mighty shift put in by volunteers from a local firm, Infineum.

Terrific turnout for bulbathon! No volunteer event on Sunday 31 October

News

The heavens cleared for us at exactly the right time today – and 24 trusty volunteers made short work of planting bulbs and laying out paths.

This means there’s nothing urgent left to get done tomorrow. And as the forecast is pretty dubious we’ll save our energies for the hedge and shrub planting, hopefully on November 27 and 28.

In the meantime, please enjoy these pics of the volunteers at work. (Click on the images to see full pic.)