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If you have ever felt like you were running out of planting space in your garden, or if you didn’t have any space in the first place, our Creating a Green Wall course is made for you. It is a new course which we should have run during lockdown but which we were able to run for the first time last week. The course participants learned how to use a couple of pallets, some membrane, a piece of leaky hose, some staples and some nails to create a vertical garden. This wasn’t instant gardening. It took a day to put the pallet-sized green wall together, and that was with all the materials, including plants, ready and waiting. But it was incredibly effective and the feedback was that it was really inspiring too. The photos on social media show how varied and beautiful the results can be. The whole wall can be edible, with herbs and vegetables filling the gaps cut into the membrane, or it could be a vertical alpine bed with all kinds of alpine plants spilling out over the pallet planks. Everyone went away with plans of how they were going to make their own version, leaving us with two lovely green walls to nurture over the months to come.
We have also been making Plants for Free this week, with a return to our very popular propagation course. This is the right time of year to take semi-ripe cuttings and pots were quickly filled with cuttings taken from Spirea, vine, dogwood, Buddleia, Salvia and more. Seeds were harvested from foxgloves, Salvia, cornflowers and lupins. Trays of seed were sown and carried home carefully (we hope). This course runs four times and year and there are always cuttings to strike or seeds to sow. Let us know if you would like join us next time.
The big news this week is that we are launching our first print making course in September, taught by Norwich artist and teacher, Gillian Francis, who runs Make Play Connect. This is a six-week course in Botanical and Textural Print Making and Gillian will encourage students to observe and gather both inspiration and materials from the grounds of Ketteringham Hall. This will be a fantastic course and even if you don’t think you have any artistic skill you will still love it and create beautiful, unique prints. Give it a go!
Upcoming courses with availability:
Lawn Care & Maintenance 2nd September
What Needs Doing Now 8th September
Introduction to Garden Design (8 week course) 10th September
Composting Made Simple 11th September
Certificate in Practical Horticulture (10 week course) 16th and 19th September
Botanical and Textural Print Making (6 week course) 28th September
Plant of the Week
Hydrangea quercifolia
This is spreading deciduous shrub discovered in United States in 1803 with deeply lobed leaves which turn an amazing red and purple as autumn approaches and are similar to the leaves of the American oak. This is where the name comes from (quercus is oak in Latin) and it is commonly known as oak-leafed hydrangea. It has large cream flowers of conical panicles with numerous large sterile florets and grows in moist well-drained soil in sun or semi shade.
Contact us via www.norfolkschoolofgardening.co.uk or follow us on Instagram and Facebook.
