the bees

Description

John Marder, Landscape and Horticultural Officer at Horsham District Council, talks about the planted beds in North Street in Horsham. Transcript: Hi I'm John Marder, Horticultural and Landscape Officer in the Park Services department (at Horsham District Council). What we're doing this morning is we're planting up what will be the jubilee ribbon in North Street, which is big long beds that stretch most of the way really between the railway station and up there towards the Black Jug. We have started the planting this morning and have got Green Gym here helping us and doing a wonderful job and we are carrying on with it and maybe, hopefully finishing it tomorrow Tuesday 27 (March) with Chichester College students, I think there's about 25 students from Chichester College coming. So it's herbaceous perennials and grasses, they won't reach their full maturity in the first year but you will see lots of changes happening here over this summer and hopefully next year it will look really lovely. Okay well here we are in North Street (in Horsham) at the end of July, we're looking at the jubilee ribbon that was planted up the last time we had a really nice sunny day, I think, which was back at the end of March when it was planted up by some volunteers from Green Gym and Chichester College. We've had some terrible weather since then and when we planted the plants that day, you could hardly see them because they were tiny little plants that hadn't started growing. But they're growing up now, some of them above head height, some of them have flowered already and some of them are still coming into flower. But many of them are in flower now and it's starting to look good with the range of textures and colours and different shades of plants. The bees and butterflies love it, there's loads of insects around it all the time. And we're getting fantastic reports from the public and passers by, sending us emails and just making comments to us as we're working outside here so it's worked out really well. Of course it is a planting that's mainly for summer interest but it'll be looking nice as well we hope during the winter time as a lot of the plants have got a permanent stem structure, which will stand in the winter. And then it'll all be just cut down in February ready to start again the next year. We've been looking after it so far with input from our own Grounds Maintenance team. It's very much the intention to get a really good tight group of volunteers involved in the upkeep of these beds. I think it's an opportunity for people to enjoy gardening, get in amongst the plants and learn about gardening so we're going to really try hard to promote this as an opportunity for volunteers so not only will it have been planted by volunteers but it can be looked after by volunteers in the future and subsequent years so hopefully by the time it starts growing up next spring, we'll have that completely in place. Ends Produced by Horsham District Council. July 2012.