Hello there one and all and welcome to another instalment of life at the Tree Life Centre here on the outskirts of Bristol! We all here hope you had a good month and enjoyed/didn’t get too stressed out by the school summer holidays. It’s been very busy on our home at Grimsbury Farm and we’ve had many a visitor pop by and look round the centre to see what we are up to, including buying some of our lovely trees and wildflowers! Thank you to all and we hope you enjoyed your visit and you come back again soon.
A new hedge being laid, just some of the maintenance onsite.
With the summer coming to an end everyone here has been busy with general site maintenance getting the place ready for our most productive time of year, the autumn seed time with collecting, processing and sowing ahead of us. In addition the wildflower and herb garden group are busy preparing cold frames, both the space and the building, ready for the seeds for next years plants. Both the groups have been busy preparing their spaces ready for next year to welcome the newly grown plants in the future, including our new experiments with lavender, curry plant and rosemary cuttings! Fingers crossed they will be a success so we can add them to the flowers will sale.
The new cuttings
The most productive group over the past month has been by far and away the edible plants group on a Monday as there has been much harvesting of goodies, such as the potatoes, along with spacing out leeks, planting out spinach seed and potting up the strawberry runners so we have another bumper batch of strawberry plants to sale! Alongside this they have attempted to make many a interesting concoction with natural ingredients to show the guys how plants are used in our food.
Digging over the spud patch
Elsewhere, two of our guys headed off to Newton Abbott for a two day training course on leadership as part of their Volunteer Officer training. Both enjoyed the trip and have come back with plenty of ideas on how to control our unruly mob we have! All joking aside, it was a good chance to meet other VO’s from across the West Country to compare notes and find out how their groups run.
Finally, we had our ‘official’ opening of the new cabin with proper photos taken of the group which will be posted shortly, meanwhile here’s a camera-phone picture taken of the event…
Parish Notices:
On Saturday September 14th at 7:30pm there will be a Bat Walk on our home of Grimsbury Farm held by South Gloucestershire Council. For more details keep an eye out on our Facebook and Twitter.