John Roper

Task 1 – Planting

The 16 volunteers had to be watchful as we moved around the site, as the pathways were dangerously slippery from the recent heavy rain. But, despite days of cold and rain, we had a beautifully clear and bright day to start the process of bedding in bare-rooted trees, and a few specimen potted plants too. These needed to be planted in advance of the Big Plant-up scheduled for April 2018.

Planting Record

Please go to Danesbury Fernery Planting Record to see a list of the 100x  trees and shrubs, and a few perennials, which the volunteers planted on 15th February 2018 under the direction of Sarah Marsh, our Garden Designer.

Screening

The prime purpose of many of the bare-rooted trees planted is to restore the shelter which the more delicate ferns and other specimen plants would have enjoyed in the past. An equally important purpose is to screen the site from unwelcome Motorway views, (not a Victorian problem), whilst also presenting seasonal blocks of colour and interest which will frame the many other vistas to be enjoyed from within the Fernery.

A great deal of planning is underway to ensure that the mechanical digger will be able to operate on site in the two  weeks commencing 9th April without impeding the designated Big April plant-up.

Task 2 – Mulching Cage

Mike was able to cut his way through the brambles and with Andrew was able to build a second mulching cage which will gradually be brought into commission.

Task 3 – Excavation – North side

Mike also managed to excavate more brick ‘foundations’ at the North end of the dell, which throw up even more unanswered questions.  

Are they in fact foundations of some sort, or perhaps elaborately shaped planting beds? In April when we have the mechanical digger on site, we will carefully remove some of the spoil above that area to see if we can come up with the answers.

Task 3 – Fencing

Stephen continued the very hard and slow task of digging out old wrought-iron fencing panels from the lower side of the site, where they have lain unseen for many years, under several feet of chalk and spoil.

We are gradually moving these original panels to fill gaps in the fencing on the top side of the site where they are in full view of visitors. In the fullness of time, we will plan to replace the fencing on the lower side with replicas.

Task 4 – Excavation South side – The Steps

Ann and Becca continued their exploration of the steps on the South side of the dell.

As with the discoveries at the North end of the site, every piece of excavation throws up more questions about the direction these steps are taking.

Task 5 – Watering

Last but by no means least, Harry got a temporary watering hose into action for the first time from our new mains supply in the shed. He and Tony watered many of the new plants, and next week it is hoped that our new self winding reel and 40 m hose will be installed, ready to be tested over the entire site. We will report on that separately, as we will need to organise a watering roster of volunteers.

Team News and Announcements

New Members

We were very pleased to welcome four new team members: Jane Thom, Mike Smith, Sylvia Cook, and Richard Tucker – not forgetting Sara who joined us last month.

Welwyn Festival  – Open Gardens Programme 2018

We have been accepted as one of the Open Gardens within the 2018 Welwyn Festival Open Gardens Programme. We have made impressive excavation progress on the site since our Open Gardens introduction in 2017, and we can now add considerably to the overall interest value by proudly talking about, and showing, the emerging Victorian Garden.

We will be ‘Open’ on the afternoon of the SUNDAY 17TH JUNE 2018

This is the 1st Sunday of the Welwyn Festival – i.e. the day after the ‘Street Market’,traditionally the Festival  opening event.

We will have more news, and plans to publish over the next two months, and must expect that June will come around very quickly!

Dates of Next Meetings

(Please go to our Calendar for details of all meetings).

Fernery Gardening Group

Saturday 3rd March 10 a.m.

Work Parties

Thursday 15th March  10 a.m. The Fernery

Next Work Party Meeting – Thursday 15th February 2018

We next meet in the Fernery at 10 am. on Thursday 15th February 2018, when the BBC forecasts that it will a case of  ‘Sunny Intervals and Breezy’

Outline Work Plan – Immediate Priority – Garden Restoration

It is important that all volunteers understand that because some 600 trees and plants will be purchased for planting in April 2018, then this fact alone will inevitably shape our work priorities over next few months.

Although we will press on with excavation of rockwork wherever and whenever we can, that work is not time-related, and tasking priority will therefore be given to getting the 600 plants bedded in safely.

Mechanical Help

For 2 weeks commencing Monday 9th April, the Council will make a  mechanical digger, and Maydencroft resources, exclusively available to us a) to remove unwanted spoil and b) to help (if the volunteers need help) with the big April plant-up.

February 15th 2018 tasks

TASK 1 – Bare-rooted Tree Planting 

On Friday 9th February Sarah, our garden designer, with Ann MacDonald (WHBC) are meeting up at Rochfords Wholesale Nursery to purchase some bare-rooted trees. This is the time of year to buy them as they are considerably cheaper than when potted up by the nursery for later sale.

These plants will be placed in their final planting positions, in advance of the 15th February work party, ready to be heeled in. The plants might need a drink, so Andrew and Harry are working to select and install a shed-based hose reel in time.

TASK 2 – Mulching Cage

Task 2a – If we have time to prepare the materials needed, we want to open a second storage area to gather leaves, matching the first one that Andrew built. We therefore plan to cut into the brambles just to the North of the existing storage cage and build a second one. We have loppers to help clear the area.

Task 2b -The first leaf cage can start to be emptied and used – once errant sticks have been removed.

Task 2c – We are hoping for a delivery of mulch from the Borough Council in time for the big plant-up and we will have to agree where it should be stored ready for use.

TASK 3 – Leaf Blowing

If it is not too wet then we must have another go at lifting more autumn leaves from the paths and loading them into the Mulching Cage.

TASK 4 – Weeding

We need to keep a close watch on nettles which are threatening to get going once again. But the nettle roots cannot be put into the mulching cages, and must be stored in our wildlife area.

TASK 5 – Ongoing – Removal of tufa rock from the Central area.

It is a certainty that before Maydencroft’s mechanical help  arrives in April 2018, we will need to start to clear the central area where the tufa rocks have previously been dumped. This central area will play a principal part of the Garden Design and the site will need to be prepared and mulched, ready for planting, before the date of the big April plant-up.

TASK 6 – Ongoing – Assessment of Areas for Spoil Removal

We have to agree a schedule with the Council, which identifies those areas that we want included for mechanical soil removal. Mechanical excavation is likely to include pathways in the dell that were only half excavated in 2017; the spoil heap at the North end by the Pulhamite outcrop that is currently hiding the secrets of the brick foundations in that area; the pathway at the top of the slope which looks to be covering more brickwork and possibly steps too; possibly excavate the slope beneath the red-brick retaining wall to see what it hides; and remove soils that remain within the gorge and to the side of the dropping well. Another area that might be considered is the Southwards extension of the top path above the grotto, and the planting bed above that, which we believe hides one of Anthony Parson’s Victorian drainage tanks.

We will also ask for the basin to be cleared of the rocks dropped in by vandals.

Other Future Planned Activities.

1st Welwyn Scouts – Projects for young people

We are in the process of agreeing badgework projects for boys and girls of the 1st Welwyn Scout Group – of whom Andy Trotter, (one of our team members), is Group Scout Leader. They will range from a rudimentary Survey/Drawing of the Fernery Site, to the construction and erection of bird boxes.

The purpose is to stimulate young peoples’ interest and involvement in the countryside, and perhaps help them value this Victorian gem on their doorstep. Scout Leaders will be present at all times to provide the necessary supervision, but the support of FOD volunteers will be greatly appreciated.

When these Projects are agreed, they will be detailed on the website.

Location of the Victorian Water Pipes    

Dr Kris Lockyear, Author, and Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at UCL, (and President of the Welwyn Archaeological Society) has special interests in field work and geophysics. He hopes to be able to make an assessment for us in April/May time.

Website Changes  – a new Garden Restoration tab.

We have created a new Garden Restoration tab just for recording all gardening and planting aspects of our work. The Garden Restoration section includes details of Sarah’s appointment as our Garden Designer, together with her 1st draft Planting List which has already been agreed with the Borough Council. We will be posting ‘Garden’ News items as we proceed.

Meeting Place

We will meet at 10 am at The Fernery on Thursday 15th February 2018. The leaders will expect to be on site from 9.30 onwards to get the tools ready, so if you are an ‘early bird’ and can help, please do so.

We are expecting to welcome one or two new team members.

All team members should have good quality garden gloves and wear strong boots, and bring a hot drink for elevenses. We will provide small hand tools for general use.

For newcomers, the Fernery can be found at the top end of North Ride on the Danesbury Estate, AL6 9RD. For more details please go to ‘Where We Are‘ tab at the top of the page.

STOP PRESS – Open Gardens Programme

Your Committee is moving closer towards recommending that we ‘open’ the Fernery once again in 2018 as part of the Welwyn Festival Open Gardens Programme. Since our brilliant introduction on June 18th 2017 we have made further startling discoveries of rockwork and brickwork, and for the first time we will be able to show visitors the shape of our new Fernery Garden. But this will only be possible if we are able once again to call upon the fabulous support we received last year from the Friends, in organising and running our Refreshments Marquee and providing other support functions.

More news will follow.

The Garden Designer

We are delighted to announce that Sarah Marsh has volunteered to be our Fernery Garden Adviser.

Sarah has also agreed to be our Fernery Gardening Group leader and we will now more confidently build a Gardening Group membership who will work under her direction to achieve our goals. It is planned to promote regular, and ad hoc mid-week meetings that Sarah will announce. (See the Calendar)

The Garden Plans

Sarah has received a brief from the Borough Council on those areas of the Fernery garden which should initially be developed and improved. These will be the beds associated with the dropping well, the bed under the hawthorn tree and the smaller bed below the lime.

Sarah will now work to produce the planting design for these beds, and draw up a list of the plants she would like to include. We will buy stock direct from WHBC’s main supplier for those plants, but Sarah will be free to source any of her choices that are not carried as stock items – and we might presume that  this would include specialist growers.

Based on this exhilarating Management step, the WHBC have reiterated their intention to fund the purchase of the plants that are needed, ready for planting in April and May 2018.

We had an excellent turn-out on a cold but bright morning, and we welcomed some new faces too.

Excavation work

The Dell

We continued our exploration of the brick wall foundations in the dell at the North end of the site. We extended our discoveries further, adding to the excitement of it all, but we do not have any greater understanding of what we are actually uncovering, whether they be bases of structures, paths or steps.

However, we have agreed that we need to prioritise the mechanical removal of all the spoil at the north end of the dell between the path and the Pulhamite rock ‘outcrop’ so that we can more speedily discover what lies underneath. Speculation is rife!

The Northern Top Slope

Related to the work in the dell we spent more time uncovering the brick wall footings/foundations immediately above, but at the top of the slope. This area too will benefit from some mechanical soil moving as we believe we are gradually uncovering both the route of the original perimeter path and, possibly, steps leading from the top of the slope down to the base of the dell.

Steps on the South side of the dell

The journal Garden Memoranda circa 1881 describes how, on entering the Danesbury Fernery, ‘we proceed a few yards, …………..Here are steps to descend to the level below, formed, as it were, out of hard rock by time itself’.

Hard as we apply our imagination to this description, we do not believe we have yet found the steps referred to in 1881.

But that is not without trying – a start was made in August 2017 excavating what looked like steps, (see Report of Work Party of 17th August 2017) at about the only place thought to be possible. This morning Ann and Becca carried on that earlier work. It was fun exposing more rockwork, but none of us is yet convinced that the rockwork discovered could have been the steps that would have allowed our 1881 Victorian ladies to descend safely to the dell to see the grotto.

The Lime Tree above this point, we know, has disturbed some of the Pulhamite rockwork at the Southern end of the site, and it is possible that the Lime, (a small tree in 1860 but now a giant) could well have dislodged, or even buried the original steps.

The Garden

The Garden Designer

We are delighted to announce that Sarah Marsh has volunteered to be our Fernery Garden Designer. (This is now reported separately under the Garden Restoration tab).

Weeding, Composting and Mulch generation

Selected planting beds were further weeded – the nettle roots having to be carefully removed. Plans will now be made to regularise our previous composting practices, with the intention of producing quality mulch for the new plants.

Site Visitors

We all enjoyed seeing Tony Rook, the famed local archaeologist, on site looking very sprightly and fit.

Tony has already written since his visit to record his admiration of our achievements so far, and we are all invited round to tea and cakes and a chat, to compare maps and records!

Tony properly impresses upon us that we should try to adopt the disciplines of measuring and recording our excavation work. He recommends that we try hard to find a volunteer with archaelogical or surveying skills to join our team. If anybody knows of such a person, please let us know!

Dates of Next Meetings

(Please go to our Calendar for details of all meetings).

Fernery Gardening Group

Saturday 3rd February 10 a.m.

Thursday 8th February 10 a.m

Work Parties

Thursday 15th February  10 a.m. The Fernery

We meet again this coming Thursday 18th January 2018 and we have to expect that the Fernery will be a bit cold and a bit grey as it was when these photos were taken last week. The ground underfoot is currently very heavy.

The plan will be to continue the work left off last November, limited as it might be by the ground conditions as we find them.

Excavation

We will continue the work left off last November when we began to uncover more brickwork at the North end of the dell. As was planned, by exposing more  supporting walls and brickwork we  hope to be able to predict more accurately what the structures would have looked like, and discover more hidden paths and steps.

Garden Maintenance

Leaf Blowing

If it is not too wet then we must have another go at lifting more autumn leaves and loading them into our fairly crude composting box.  As the garden develops we will need all the leaf compost we can get.

Weeding

We also need to keep a close watch on nettles which are threatening to get going once again. We are advised that if we intend to develop a quality garden, as we do, then we have to weed, i.e. dig-out, these nettles, and persevere at the task year by year. To remove the nettles in the planting beds by chemical means will only delay the inevitable re-generation of the roots, and we cannot allow that to happen.

Garden Design and Development

The draft agreement reached with the Borough Council last November is currently in the process of being approved, and we hope that this will be ‘on the table’ soon. Out of that agreement, and as a matter of some urgency now, the Borough have to produce a Planting List, and broad guidelines/directions in regard to the areas of the Fernery which are to be developed in the first instance.

The Council is budgeting to purchase some 600 trees and plants in April 2018 which will determine our work patterns over next few months, in terms of developing a Garden Design , and then preparing the planting beds in readiness.

Snowdrops

If you look carefully you will see snowdrops beginning to show; out of the 1000 planted, there are about six showing at the moment. But, as with the spring daffodils which we planted in 2016, we knew at the outset that excavation and soil movements as we developed the site during 2016/17 would inevitably cause some of our early bulb planting efforts to come to grief!

Meeting Place

We will meet at 10 am at The Fernery on Thursday 18th January. The leaders will expect to be on site from 9.30 onwards to get the tools ready, so if you are an ‘early bird’ and can help, you will be welcomed.

For newcomers, the Fernery can be found at the top end of North Ride on the Danesbury Estate, AL6 9RD. For more details please go to ‘Where We Are‘ tab at the top of the page.

We look forward to seeing you all to start yet another momentous year in the recovery and restorarion of the Danesbury Victorian Fernery and Garden.

Christmas Gathering 14th December 2017

The weather was kind to the Friends who braved the ice and cold to celebrate the successes of the second year of restoration.

But in fact most of the snow had melted away with the overnight rains and it was a sunny and clear day, but still quite cold. We discovered when we left that the Fernery does provide a considerable degree of shelter from the cold wind.

Programme for 2018

The Fernery Gardening Group

This has been a poor time of the year to hope to get this Group underway – our first official meeting in November was rained off, but Lyndsay turned up on Saturday 2nd December. After bulb planting, with others from the Danesbury Residents Association, at the top end of North Ride, we had to settle for a ‘Tour’ of the site and a review of our plans as we truly needed more people to make any work worthwhile.

We are waiting for the Borough Council to confirm the Planting List that Sue, Andrew and I agreed with Ann MacDonald and Chris James at our Campus East Garden Meeting on 9th November. Until we have that List to present to a Garden Designer, we cannot plan how to lay the Garden out. We have to have an agreed Garden Design by April 2018 when the Borough Council have assured us that we will take delivery of some 600 (perimeter) trees and plants.

Somehow we have to be ready.

Seasons Greetings

We end the year wishing you and your families a Happy Christmas and New Year.

What more appropriate way to say that than by copying the ‘Danesbury Fernery Christmas Card’ that Lucy Alexander produced and published on the FaceBook Page @danesburyfernery.

Treasurer Andrew has succeeded in arranging a group membership for “The Danesbury Fernery Volunteer Group“

The BPS are very interested in our Project and Andrew has already had contact from Dr Alison Evans, BPS Membership Secretary, and Dr Peter Blake acting Representative for the East Anglia section.

As East Anglia Area representative, Peter Blake (from Norwich) hopes to visit us in person at our work party of 15th March 2018.

Peter is also circulating all east Anglia members with details about our activities and our social media contacts, and we might therefore expect visits by local members of the society. Such contact would give us hands-on guidance on growing ferns. Peter is suggesting that if any BPS member has spare ferns, then we would be pleased to have them. (Many BPS members grow their ferns from spores that take two to three years to become a sustainable plant).

Peter Blake also recommends that the Friends of Danesbury Local Nature Reserve (FOD) visit the BPS website for details of regional events that are currently at the planning stage.  To access the BPS Members’ area which contains the plant exchange scheme details, you will need to note the user-name and password : BPSMember (case-sensitive) – the same for both boxes.

Out of interest, BPS Secretary Alison has commented to Andrew on one of the posts from our own website, How to Grow Specimen Ferns (principally the extract from Robinsons’s book documenting Anthony Parson’s systematic approach). She endorses the need to remove any chalk from the planting beds, and to try to plant domestic cultivars as ‘they are more resistant to rabbit and deer taste’.

We have received notice from the Hertfordshire Community Foundation that unfortunately 

the Friends of Danesbury LNR have not been short-listed by the High Sheriff’s Panel  for the 2018 Award.

We are advised that a large number of nominations are received from a wide range of fantastic organisations in the county, and that it is always a difficult job to narrow them down to the final few.

But we are thanked for all our  work and we have the Panel’s best wishes for our future projects.