Welcome one and all, friends old and new, to yet another update from the folks here at the Tree Life Centre, just outside of Bristol. We hope you all had a good month, including a relaxing Easter break, enjoying the not too shabby weather for April! The Centre has recently been transformed into a green oasis with plenty of blossom and pollen floating around. Everyone appears to be enjoying this time of year, in between the sneezes! Anyway…enough about our hay fever problems on with what’s been going on.
Hey little apple blossom
Where to start with such an active month, no doubt I’ll miss lots out unintentionally!
The Edible plants group have been extremely busy sowing and looking after all the plants growing both outside and in the polytunnel. It looks like there is going to be another bumper crop for them again this year and the main growing season has only just begun! Hopefully we will have some veg plants for sale of the course of the rest of the spring/summer months. Although we appear to have sold out of strawberry plants already!
Broad beans and our custom made frames
Both the wildflower and herb growing projects have also suddenly got a fair bit busier trying to expand our ranges, especially the herbs. Many more trays of seeds have been sown and in the case of the herbs many new different varieties are being attempted, to hopefully be able to sell on. At the moment we have plenty of chives and parsley. Today we took cuttings and divisions from a chocolate mint plant (smells like after eights), supplied by yours truly, this to add to our two other types of mint we sell (pepper and garden) alongside trying out apple mint and various other herbs. Next week we will be trying out of dye plants!
Just some of our wildflowers we have for sale
Also, alongside the wildflower growing project, another wildflower bed has been created with the emphasis on attracting bees thanks to receiving a couple of packs of wildflower seeds as part of Kew Gardens community projects programme. The bed was created alongside the new cabin and the seeds have started to grow already so hopefully plenty more bees will be paying us a visit soon!
We will soon start recruiting again for the diplomas in work based horticulture, levels one and two, we run so if you are interested then don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can always come and volunteer before starting to get a feel for the place before signing up!
Finally, at the end of the month we said a sad goodbye to our Project Officer Rachael Ford, who has been with us for six months. The volunteers gave her a great send off by holding a pizza party, and included a round of an early (by a few days!) Happy Birthday. She has done a brilliant job over the past six months after been thrown in rather at the deep end and we wish her well returning back to her old role within TCV with 16-25 year olds. We hope to see her again soon and uses the Centre with her group as she will be missed!
Parish Notices:-
We are close on both Monday 5th May (Bank Holiday) and Tuesday 6th May (due to training) so we will be back open as usual on Wednesday 7th with our new Project Officer/Training Officer (more about this in May’s update!).
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