Ellens garden visit

What better way to spend a Saturday afternoon than having a BBQ in the garden. Everyone at Beyond the Wall has spent the last year working exceptionally hard to transform the walled garden, and with being open to the public during the week have been delighted to share the space with many people. The garden can of course be used at the weekend by private appointment with BTW in exchange for a donation to the charity.With the BBQ lit, guests, including head gardeners and local gardening celebrity Ellen Mary, were given a tour of the garden, and a talk on what the transformation has entailed.

Food was served and Pimms was drunk on the lawn in glorious sunshine, though with one looming cloud everyone moved over to enjoy the shelter of the marquee during a passing shower.

With goodbyes being said, it was great to be sent a link to Ellen Marys Blog a couple of days later with her account of the afternoon, you can read this at http://blog.ellenmarygardening.co.uk/blog.aspx

If you are interested in using the garden for your own function, please be in contact with us by email for details including facilities available and cost admin@beyondthewall.org.uk

Posted by Phill

Chicken World

With the old chicken run now only being home to Stan the cockerel, and another smaller run housing there Bantams, we decided to overhaul the living arrangement for the chickens within the walled garden. With a donation made from building a display garden at the Suffolk Show earlier in the year, we bought some new picket fencing and wood stain, which would form the first phase of the planned coop and run.

With the old run being dismantled, a new run was put in place. With this being painted and division made in the original enclosed run, the Bantams moved home and soon settled in.

The run is still not yet complete. Presently it is part covered with a solid roof, something that in the coming months we plan to extend to the whole run, so that during the winter months the chickens can all enjoy running around on dry ground. In addition if there are future scares with bird flu, we will be able to keep our chickens separate and safe from wild birds and the possible infection that they could carry.

When all the work is complete we are planning to bring in some new chickens, so that while enjoying looking after them, we can also collect fresh eggs for use when baking cakes and other fresh treats for sale in our café.

Posted by Phill

Tool Donation

Clients and staff at Beyond the Wall were delighted with a generous gift from Mary recently, which has funded the purchase of a number of much needed tools for maintaining The Thormham Walled Garden.

On bumping into Simon and Mary at the Suffolk Show, where we showed our display garden ‘#gardeningsetsyoufree’ Mary was keen to assist us in the garden by ensuring we had enough tools for the job of maintaining it through the coming year.
With a list of tools needed being drawn up, Mary has kindly paid for a number of hand tools which have already been of huge assistance with summer pruning, and will help us all the way through our winter prune as well as bulb planting and general maintenance of the garden. Her generosity has also afforded us the paint and a few fixings that are needed for the regeneration of our chicken coop, which was in need of repair.
Beyond the Wall are hugely appreciative of this donation, one that has come from a place of great community spirit, Simon has volunteered with the garden a number of times this year already, assisting us with cultivating the vegetable and flower beds a swell as the double border that underwent a transformation. 
It’s great to have such strong links with community members, with us holding a number of fundraising events and being open to the public (weekdays 10-2.30) we hope that Mary, Simon and many more of our community members are able to take the opportunity to enjoy the garden as it bursts into colour.

Posted by Phill, July 2017

Jons woodwork afternoon

Following the successful tour of the garden provided for Westhorpe Garden Club, Garden Club member Jon got in contact with an idea for an activity that might help with plant sales from the walled garden. Jon offered to lead a short woodwork class that would allow people to break pallets apart safely, for the wood, which in turn could be turned into crates and trays to hold collections of plants.

This is a project that a number of us at BTW are enthusiastic about, and one that in the wet winter months will see us bursting into production.

Jon and his wife spent an afternoon with us, demonstrating safe ways of taking pallets apart, and in doing so provided us with the pre made spacers that would make assembling trays and crates all the easier.

We were also delighted that Jon made a donation, alongside his demonstration, of wood, tools and nails which would be all that we need to get this project going.

In the autumn we are looking to put together a stock bed of all of the plants we have in the herbaceous border, watch this space in the spring for news of when we plan to start selling our herbaceous plant crates.

A massive thank you to Jon for his time and donation, having already made a couple of trays we are now looking forward to a productive winter of woodworking.

Posted by Phill