The Hope Garden landscaping isn’t quite finished, so we‘re unable to plant it up yet. Luckily, Pen Y Foidr allotments let us plant their Welsh varieties of apple, plum, damson and pear, along the northern hedge just to the rear of the Hope Garden.
As it says in the footer on the website, the Hope Garden is “Funded by Local Places for Nature, delivered by National Lottery Heritage Fund in partnership with the Welsh Government“
These are the three principles I like to apply when thinking about wildlife forest garden design and ecology.
Paths are the bones of the garden. They define the space, open it up to exploration, enable access for the care required to tend the plants.
As the Hope Garden develops, so do the aims and objectives. The overaching aim is a “community space at the heart of a wildlife forest garden“. What this means on the ground so far is three key outcomes:
Considering the weather, a considerable crowd gathered for the pruning workshop on a cold Saturday. Martin Hayes has been designing, planting and pruning orchards for many years and is much sought after for his engaging, no-nonsense approach.
Martin Hayes has a lifetime‘s experience of planting and pruning fruit trees. In this free workshop running from 10am , he will show you the basics of how to prune and why, and also when to prune. There are four sites to visit, so there will be plenty of opportunity for you to practise what he preaches.
The site of the Hope Garden is at the lower end of a clay rhos pasture field in West Wales. As you can imagine, there is a lot of water, and it all flows through the garden!
Like many people in Wales, I seem to have several projects on the go simultaneously! One of the most marvellous things about working on the Hope Garden has been the opportunity to meet and work with some very talented and passionate people. And there has also been a great deal of crossover of ideas and projects between different agencies and organisations.
We‘ve had some bad news and good news.
The bad news is that we weren‘t successful in our grant application to Transition Bro Gwaun‘s Community Climate Fund, because we didn‘t provide any evidence of habitat improvement. However, Tom was really helfpul with feedback. I‘m involved in another group called Glaswelltir Ceredigion Grassland, and fed this feedback into an application for Dŵr Cymru‘s Citizen Science Support Programme, with a Hope Garden-inspired project called Grassland Nature ID.
We purchased a couple of Fixed Point Photography brackets for the Hope Garden, from a company called Landmark. The brackets are quite expensive but very well made, and they will enable us to document the progress of the Hope Garden.
Together with West Wales Biodiversity Information Centre, we’ve made a Expression of Interest for wildlife identification equipment and training for Ysgol Cilgerran from Transition Bro Gwaun Community Climate Fund.