We seem to have spent a lot of time just eating cake in the garden recently. On Sunday, we got back to doing some gardening in the mild but not too hot weather. Lots of people knuckling down.
Phew what a scorcher
What a hot, sunny bank holiday. A perfect afternoon for finding a shady spot under some Swedish Whitebeam trees, with a gentle breeze, and catching up with Nightingale garden friends. So that is what we did - although Julian was heroic and worked on the water tower structure, putting us to shame.
Next Sunday, back to work... if it isn't too hot.
Update on 4 September: it wasn't too hot and Julian and Justin made good progress on the tower. We decided it needed a name - the ones suggested by children were extremely long - so we have decided to call it Falling Water. Partly because we watched a documentary on Frank Lloyd Wright and partly because we have decided we will try to make it catch water for us as well as provide housing for bugs and a support for a new - to be planted - clematis.
Some updates
We have been so busy recently, we haven't updated the website... and in some cases because it has taken us a while to finish things - or start them.
Blooms for bees - citizen science
Earlier this year, we registered with the Blooms for Bees citizen science project. This involved growing from seed three colours (white, red and purple) of Mignon Series dahlias. These are now growing well in small bed in front of the club hut (and we will put a poster up about them today).
These 'bedding dahlias' are 'single' (simple flowers), nectar-rich and known to be liked by bumblebees. The scientists now want to find out if these bees have a preference for flower colour. We are doing the survey by counting the number of bumblebees on each colour of flower for 5 minutes each.
If you'd like to do this too (you need to be a registered participant), send your counts to our garden volunteers at info@nightingalegarden.org.uk and we can enter them online for you.
You will need to tell us:
- On what date you did the count;
- The number of open flower heads included for each colour.
- The number of bumblebees on each colour in 5 mins each.
- If you can, identify the type of bumblebee (but this is quite tricky - they move fast!).
More info: www.bloomsforbees.co.uk
Update: January 2018 - the conclusion of the national survey was that the bees aren't fussy about colour but the late blooms were very appreciated by them.
Or just enjoy watching bees on the flowers!
CCVS Rag Ballot - good news!
We have just heard our January application for funding to the CCVS Rag Ballot was successful. This means we will shortly have £100 to spend on gardening tools.
Our aspiration is to have a good range of strong tools that can be used in the community garden but also taken out to other greenspaces around the area. For example, we already take a range of tools and gloves of different sizes to the Wulfstan Way raingardens on Saturday mornings.
Shortly, we hope to start helping a group of parent volunteers and staff to make a new school garden at Queen Edith's primary school. From time to time, we also lend some of our tools to community groups, if we think they can be used safely.
Late July in the garden
Morning moths
We had a really good morning in the garden, opening up Guy's overnight moth trap. We think we had about 19 new species, not recorded in the past two years. We will send the records into local databases. The largest and most spectacular moths are the hawkmoths but the smaller ones are very beautiful too.
We had such a successful trap, Guy offered to return later in the year (scheduled for Sunday 8 October during the Funpalace) to see what we have living in the garden then. We will post the dates and times on the QECF website.
Bats in the garden
We had a lovely evening talking about the pond, adding some more plants, sticklebacks and a dragonfly larva, setting up an overnight moth trap and bat watching and detecting. We saw and heard four species of bat this year:
- Noctule, which is the largest we have, first to fly, high above the garden - rather like a swift - it feeds on the Light arches moths we caught in the trap.
- Common pipestrelles - much smaller and later and lower flying (as it is getting dark) - a couple flew circuits low over the pond catching flies above our heads.
- Serotine pair - larger than the pips and much rarer - Guy thinks there is a maternity roost in a building nearby.
- Soprano pipestrelle - a new species for us in the garden and park.
Swimming around on the pond
On Wednesday, we spotted twelve baby ducklings and their mother swimming on the pond. But we shouldn't be surprised if they dwindle in number over the next few days and weeks.
According to our pond advisor: they should be eating insects (and not sliced bread) so please don't be tempted to feed them. Although they are very cute, we'd like them to fly (or waddle) away fairly soon or our pond will just become a muddy duck pond and we won't have good pond dipping opportunities.
Sometimes, you have to be cruel to be kind...
In fact, on Thursday, a similar sized group were spotted in a garden across the road from the park so maybe they are hunting for the safest place to be with the tastiest food (or had been reading this webpage).
Update 2 July: four ducklings spotted with their mother - and a visiting cat eyeing them up... hope they survived the encounter!
Update: August - all four ducklings grew to adult size and were seen often in the garden, especially at night. We have seen them since mid-August and assume they have now moved on.
Cambridge Wild in the garden
We have chosen dates and are starting to plan activities. See the Cambridge Wild page for more information (poster).
If you can help us on the day or beforehand, it would be very welcome. We don't have a budget for this so what we offer is quite simple...