Let Oxford's gardeners use spare land

PEOPLE with large gardens they can no longer cultivate are to give over their land to keen green-fingered residents as part of Oxford’s first community gardening project.

The trustees of a thriving community garden are launching a scheme aimed at getting more people involved in growing food on small and unusual plots of land — and sharing the fruits of their labour.

Barracks Lane Community Garden, in East Oxford, is applying for a National Lottery grant to set up its local food programme.

The idea is to teach those who have not tried gardening how to grow fruit vegetables, encourage those who already have allotment plots to share their produce and persuade people with large gardens who cannot cultivate them themselves to share their land, allowing others to dig for victory.

Trustee John Green said: “There are a couple of schemes across the country where people get together and match up those who need gardening space with those who have it and either don’t want to manage it or cannot, which is what we are hoping to do.

“For example, in East Oxford there are thousands of apple trees that are unpicked.

“The idea would be to find people to gather up that produce and put it where it’s needed, either give it away or turn it into juice.”

The group is now preparing to apply for a £27,000 lottery grant.

Mr Green said: “It’s all about celebrating local food, but also trying to stimulate the whole idea that with a very small space – for example a window box, a patio or a small garden – you can get involved in growing things at home and that it is fun, very productive and also healthy.”

The plan is to set up regular masterclasses and activities aimed at bringing the community together, such as feasts featuring locally-grown produce.

Fellow trustee Annie Davy said about 700 people would be directly involved in workshops but it could potentially have far wider knock-on effects.

She said: “We hope the garden will inspire people, demonstrate different techniques and pass on skills, like how you make compost.

“We are getting masses of enthusiastic responses and lots of support from allotments associations, children’s centres and all sorts of people.”

Barracks Lane Garden opened in 2007 after a group of dedicated residents transformed a derelict, waste-filled garage site into a thriving community garden.

http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk
By Fran Bardsley

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Plant A Bonsai

You’ve surely seen the beautiful Bonsai tree somewhere in your life, even if only watching Mr. Miagi on the Karate Kid. It’s probably likely that if there’s a Japanese restaurant in your town, then you’ve sent them there. The art and dedication that it takes to plant and do the necessary upkeep with a Bonsai Tree is enormous, and sometimes much too daunting for those with a green thumb.

Bonsai’s are dwarf-potted plants that have been cultivated for centuries by the Chinese and Japanese. Since the end of World War II this art has taken off as a great hobby and pastime in the United States.

It not only take’s much patience to properly raise a bonsai, but also a good amount of artistic skill as well. It’s time-consuming, and there is a lot more to it than one might think. You could say that a bonsai is the marriage between plant and container, and nurturer…al forming the bond to create a distinct and lovely picture of nature in miniature form.

It is true that the bonsai is actually a hardy tree or shrub that is grown outside within a pot; however other tropical woody plants such as dwarf pomegranate can be developed as bonsais too. It’s important to note that only fairly small-leaved species should be used for bonsai trees - otherwise, the leaves will be out of scale with the rest of the plant. Using Ginkgo, Zeikova, and some of the pines and maples can give you outstanding bonsai trees.

Your best bet, and the most interesting bonsais are created from already runty plants with considerable, narrowing trunks and naturally twisty or gnarled branches. Also using young but otherwise normal plants can be effective as well. You can find such trees in either the wild or in a nursery.

An important part of a bonsai, bonsai pots, come in an array of designs. They can range from two inches to around twenty-five inches in diameter, and from one to ten inches deep. You can get these in glazed styles, or more popular porous red clay style. Either way, your pot should have a hole for draining.

The mixture of soil varies, but in any case it should be able to hold moisture and food, while also allowing for good drainage and aeration. Bonsai experts usually will layer the soil, beginning with a quite coarse mixture at the bottom of the bonsai pot, and then working their way up to a finer mixture. Then, the soil is topped off with either small ground-cover plants, moss, or fine pebbles.

Many people steer clear of the thought of raising a bonsai tree because they have been conditioned to believe that it takes years and years to nurture a bonsai to beauty. This actually is far from the case. In fact a bonsai can be made quite beautiful in only a few hours if you’ve taken care in choosing the right tree, the best pot for you, and giving it a try to prune your tree into your very own creation.

Article Source:Isnare
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