From the Chairman:
"Welcome to our third newsletter of this Summer – and the weather is being as strange as the rest of life. After the wettest winter on record, we now have had barely any rain since lockdown began, and my garden is showing the strain. Fortunately, the garden centres are now reopened, and we can go and spend all our spare cash on plants and other bits and pieces. Do support our local businesses if you can, they need it and we will need them in the future. Keep gardening, and there is lots more here to keep you thinking about gardening." - Robin Britton
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In this issue:
- Our Summer Show
- Plant and seed swap
- Open for business
- Looking for some Zoom volunteers
- Keep growing the potatoes!
- How to get your Chelsea ‘fix’
- Question about a palm tree
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- Elderflower cordial – recipe from Pam Corbin
- ‘No Mow May’
- Virtual tour
- Mulberry Bees
- Feedback
- Check out our Facebook page
- Find us in the online version of Uplyme Parish News
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Our Summer Show
As the coronavirus restrictions head on into the summer, we’re planning a virtual presence for our Summer Show, even though the physical show has had to be cancelled. We’re expecting to run a limited number of classes and place people’s photographs in photo galleries on our website.
We’re working on the details so please keep your eyes peeled for updates by email and on the poster sites around Uplyme. As a reminder, our main noticeboard is on the side wall of Uplyme Village Stores.
Plant and seed swap
Richard and Diane Barrett of Clappentail Park, Lyme Regis have set up a new ‘fruit area’ and would like some strawberry plants if anyone has some available. They have some purple sprouting plants ready to swap. Please contact richard.barrett.uk@gmail.com.
Open for business
We’re all really pleased that our garden centres and nurseries are now reopening. To complete our series on local suppliers who kept us all going during the lockdown we’ll give a shout out to
Sea Spring Seeds at West Bexington (www.seaspringseeds.co.uk).
Rachael Pope reports that they sent seeds by post and they came the next day - very good service.
Looking for some Zoom volunteers
 As we’re clearly not going to be holding our usual talks for some time, we’re exploring whether technology might help us get together a bit more. Zoom is growing in popularity and we’d like to experiment whether it might work for us.
We’re looking for 20 volunteers who’d be willing to try out a virtual ‘coffee morning’ on Tuesday 26 May at 10am. The general idea would be to see if we can manage the technology and how people find the experience. You don’t need to have a Zoom account to participate and you’ll be given full instructions of what we’re planning. If it proves feasible and popular, we might try a couple of sessions to assess Zoom so that we can decide whether it’s worthwhile for the Society to invest in a subscription.
If, in principle, you would be interested in participating please email tricia@thegardenersblacksmith.co.uk by Thursday 21 May and we’ll take it from there. If you’re not available for the first session but are interested in a later one, please send an email stating this.
Keep growing the potatoes!
Monica Mellor shares news of her entries for the Potato in a Bucket competition: “I recently joined the horticultural society and bought a bucket and potato for each grandchild. They all live too far away for me to get them to the children so I’m looking after them all. Not much difference in growth so far....”
How to get your Chelsea ‘fix’
Many of us would - in more normal times - find time to watch at least some of the Chelsea Flower Show TV coverage. This year we’ll instead have to settle for the Virtual RHS Chelsea Flower Show at www.rhs.org.uk/Chelsea. There will be daily online sessions of tips and inspiration hosted by the great and the good of the gardening world, together with plenty of activity on the RHS Facebook, Instagram and Twitter streams.
On TV, the regular Chelsea presenters will be presenting from their own homes themed programmes created with the best of previous Chelsea shows. TV coverage starts on BBC1 on Sunday 17th at 5.50pm and runs each weekday on BBC1 at 3.45pm and BBC2 at 8pm.
Question about a palm tree
Annie Kobus asks if anyone knows whether the flowers on her palm tree – see photo – can be used for culinary purposes. Please contact Annie directly on ann_kobus@yahoo.co.uk if you have any information that might be of help.
Elderflower cordial – recipe from Pam Corbin
The sweetly scented, creamy-white flowers of the elder tree appear in abundance in hedgerow, scrub, woodlands and wasteland in early summer and are easy to turn into a delicious fragrant cordial. They are best gathered on a warm day, just as the flower buds begin to open - but do check the perfume is good and pleasing - when they are wet they smell more like cat’s pee! And remember to leave some flowers to develop into elderberries to gather later in the year. You can make an immune-boosting elixir with them, and of course the birds like to feast on them too.
Makes about 2 litres
About 25 elderflower heads
Finely grated zest of 3 unwaxed lemons and their juice
1kg granulated sugar
1-2 heaped tsp citric acid (optional)
Inspect the elderflowers heads carefully and remove any insects. Place the flower heads in a large bowl together with the lemon zest and juice. Bring 1.5 litres water to the boil and pour over the content of the bowl. Cover the surface with a sheet of baking parchment and leave overnight in a cool place to infuse.
Strain the liquid through a jelly bag or fine sieve and then pour into a saucepan. Place over gentle heat. Add the sugar and the citric acid. Stir gently to dissolve the sugar, then bring to simmering point for a couple of minutes.
Use a funnel to pour the hot syrup into sterilised bottles and seal with a top. Keep in the fridge. Alternatively, you can pour into a plastic container - remember to leave a 2-3cm gap at the top of the bottle to allow the frozen cordial to expand - and keep it in the freezer.
TO USE: Dilute to taste with ice-cold still or sparkling water. Or mix a little with sparkling wine, or splash a little into a summertime G & T. Cheers!
‘No Mow May’
Lockdown has left people with plenty of time for gardening and lawns have probably been mown more frequently than ever before. Wildplant charity Plantlife, however, is encouraging us to adopt a change to our lawn mowing this month to benefit wildflowers and honeybees.
Plantlife found that lawns cut only once a month attract 10 times as many bees as those cut more frequently. They advise keeping two lengths of grass. Leave some patches completely unmown to let flowers such as ox-eye daisy bloom. The rest of the lawn can be mown once every month down to 1-2 inches. The information for this advice comes from the ‘Every Flower Counts’ survey, which is running again during May. For more information see www.plantlife.org.uk
Virtual tour
There have been some fantastic tulips about this year so why not enjoy the Arundel Castle Tulip Festival 2020 https://tulipfestival.co.uk/videos/. They have a beautiful video and lots of individual photos in the photo gallery too. Well worth a look!
If you have any other recommendations for virtual tours, please email tricia@thegardenersblacksmith.co.uk and we’ll include them in the next newsletter.
Mulberry Bees
As a follow on from our article on Swarming Bees in the last newsletter (see back issues here), you might enjoy this charming tale about the Mulberry Bees sent in by Janet Joyner. https://youtu.be/d0-LWQ_KJdI. It’s a 10-minute illustrated video that would be delightful to share with children and grandchildren or just to enjoy by yourself.
Feedback
“Many thanks, it is so welcome to have some gardening contact even if it's only email!”
“Great newsletter, thank you so much. Great to know where to get gardening stuff from.”
“The newsletter is excellent - thank you so much for sorting. It’s so good to see the links to places where we can access plants and things.”
Check out our Facebook page
If you’re a regular Facebook user, please check out our new Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/UpLRHS. We’d very much like people to post photos of their gardens, items of interest to other members etc. We look forward to seeing you there.
Find us in the online version of Uplyme Parish News
For at least the next couple of months, Uplyme Parish News will only be available online and not in its usual printed version. In May we have two pages for the Horticultural Society while Pam Corbin, our President, tells the history of Thursday Cottage and her remarkable jam-making career.
The online magazine can be found at https://www.uplymechurch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Uplyme-Parish-Mag-May-2020.pdf
This issue’s contributors
Thank you for your contributions of articles and photographs. This issue’s contributors are Annie Kobus, Janet Joyner, Jenny Harding, Jo Benke-Smith, Monica Mellor, Pam Corbin, Rachael Pope, Richard Barrett and Rose Mock.
If you have anything at all you’d like to contribute please send to tricia@thegardenersblacksmith.co.uk
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