Winter in the Forest Garden
There is always something to enjoy in Nature, even in Winter. Away from traffic, the air is fresh and clean.. Although many of the trees and hedges have shed their leaves, they still muffle the sounds of vehicles and voices. And those same leafless trees and hedges form lacy patterns and graceful silhouettes against the sky.
For those of us who live in or visit Batheaston, the Forest Garden in the Secret Garden by the riverside car park offers us easy access to Nature right on our doorstep.
It is a quiet spot, sheltered from the wind, somewhere to sit and de-stress. In Winter it feels calm and sleepy.
The colours are muted but there are yellows, reds and purples as well as browns and greens.
Plants reproduce mainly through seeds. A seed contains the genetic material to create a new young plant plus some starch for nourishment to help it start to grow. Seeds and the seedheads that hold them have many different sizes and shapes - all designed to help the seeds get far away from their parent plant.
In the Forest Garden, leaves are not swept up. Thet are left where they fall. The plants have worked hard to grow them using photosynthesis, water and nutrients from the soil. Leaving them on the ground gives a small army of insects, such as millipedes, beetles and fly larvae the opportunity to break them down into small pieces. Then bacteria and fungi in the soil can decompose them so that the nutrients return to the soil ready for plants to use again.
Other insects, including bees, ladybirds, caterpillars and adult butterflies and others protect themselves under bark, in dead vegetation, piles of logs and the ‘bug hotel’ while they wait for Spring.
