Garden News

In response to a request for projects that will encourage community involvement among scouts of all ages  and abilities, the WHBC Landscape & Ecology Department has proposed to Tony Lyall, Mid-Herts District Commissioner, that groups of Explorer Scouts (14-18 year olds) might ‘rabbit proof’ the cattle fence which surrounds the Danesbury Fernery.

This news will come as a great relief to the Danesbury Fernery Gardening Group who have had to watch their new plants getting steadily attacked by local rabbits. Not that the volunteers have stood by and done nothing – on the contrary – rabbit/chicken wire has had to be painstakingly fixed around the outside of all the new planting beds, with some success. No rabbits or chickens, but some slugs, have been getting through.

But with new planting beds being developed and planted up, the better long term course will be to keep the rabbits out of the Fernery altogether and, in so doing, ease the maintenance of the planting beds and further improve their appearance.

WHBC’s Ann MacDonald has provided the scouts with the following Specification which includes an  ingenious reward never offered to regular volunteers!

In principle, the task is to fix rabbit fencing to an existing cattle fence, I will have a machine scrape back the soil before you start and the task would be to fix the rabbit fencing to the existing cattle fence and then tread back the soil.  Gates will require closer thought, perhaps a design problem the Scouts can wrestle with?  It’s a simple task but there is a fair amount, not a whole field, but probably 600 linear metres.

I should think you’d need to schedule 6 work parties, we will provide the materials. We could supply pizza at the end of each work party for a job well done.   

We have to hope that scouts will find the promise of pizza more compelling than do the rabbits find the promise of succulent geraniums, and that they take up the Invitation to rabbit proof the Danesbury Fernery for us before our next major planting exercise scheduled for Autumn 2018.

Ed:  The truth will out, Tony Lyall admits that:  the District has 4 Explorer Scout Units, each of which averages about 15 members though we never ever get 100% attendance at anything (unless there’s free pizza) so we can either look to do one big project or maybe 4 smaller ones. 

During the week of 14th May 2018 Mark and Richard from Maydencroft removed all the rocks from the large Central Planting bed, then re-shaped and re-profiled it, before edging it with large stones. James and Im0gen finished it off by bedding the edging rocks with soil so that they looked as though they had always been there.

Ann MacDonald decided to cover the Central Bed with a weed suppressing membrane and on 18th May with Sarah and Andrew, they spent a couple of Happy Hours at Rochfords Nurseries selecting plants. It took three trips to transport all the plants back to the Fernery.

Some plants were planted straight away.

Early on Saturday morning 19th May the first of a two day planting session started. After Sarah had marked out where each specific plant should go, the Fernery Gardening Group swung into action. Generous watering took place before the task was completed and the process was repeated on Monday morning 21st May 2018.

Hopefully, before 17th June 2018 Open Day, a mulch of bark chip and compost will be spread all over the bed to complete the job.

All the plants will be added to The Planting Record in due course.

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’.