Love Gardening
Love Gardening Group (LG)
The other week our Croydon U3A ‘Love Gardening’ group had a rather special and unusual Awayday.
We rent a Cherry Tree at an orchard down in West Sussex, and it was our Blossom Weekend. We travelled down, not knowing quite what to expect, but on arrival it was very well-organised. Our tree was in Row 15 and Tree Number 59B. It was a joy to walk the orchard among the blossom to find it. We decided to join the Orchard owner, Michael, on a walk amongst the trees, to learn how painstakingly he tends our crop. He feeds them most weeks, and must prune and wire down branches growing in the wrong direction. Soon he will be netting them all – quite a task when you’ve got over 2,000. Michael showed us the Bumble Bees he buys from Spain to do the vital pollinating. These little fellas are already working hard for us – and
they were far too busy to pose for photographs. In July we will be invited to come back to pick the crop from our own tree. Michael said in a good year we might expect to collect 10-12 kilos per tree, and from the look at the blossom at the moment, this could be a promising year. Trees not rented are also picked, and turned into very special fruit juice as well as honey and gin. Of course it all depends on the weather, Last year the high temperatures and drought during the summer were not good for cherries, so we are all hoping for more than usual this year.
Nigel – Joint Leader for the Love Gardening group
The Love Gardening Group was established in 2018 as a place where folk could meet to share and to learn a little more about gardening.
Each January the LG group meet to plan our 1st Monday of the month meetings for the year ahead. Everyone contributes ideas as we strive for an interesting mix of garden visits, guided talks, presentations, allotment tours or simply having a tea in our own members’ gardens - something for all tastes.
Sometimes we manage to organise something special like our own private group tour e.g., the propagation unit at Wisley or visiting 5 gardens in a single day via the yellow book scheme (with cake included of course!)
It really doesn’t matter whether you have a postage stamp patio out the back, a balcony or are lucky enough to have a garden, everyone can pick up ideas or simply just enjoy our programme.
Do contact us if this sounds of interest and you would like to know more – we would love to hear from you.
Find out more via the email message link to the leader, above right.