Hurst Green Gardening Club joins Mighty Oaks Youth Group for bulb planting

Members who regularly follow this blog (hopefully a little more regularly than we have been updating it lately - sorry! - Ed), or who regularly attend meetings (thank you for the effort - Ed) may remember that the Club has been involved with the Might Oaks Youth Group in Hurst Green.  We have helped them plant seeds and make a small garden at the Community Centre (this is the link), and we have recently been out helping them to plant bulbs at the station, to help improve the area.


The weather for the day of the planting was good, and it had even rained for a while in the days ahead of the activity.  There had been some concern that, following the dry spell at the end of Summer, the good old Hurst Green clay would be rock-hard and impenetrable.  The rain softened up the ground, and the area chosen for the bulbs (the grass slope from the car park up to and alongside the path down to the ticket office) appeared to be composed of decent topsoil, perhaps made up and graded properly by the builders when the station was built.  There was therefore distinctly less hard work involved than expected!

A good number of representatives from the Club and from Mighty Oaks turned up, both adult, youth and children - the planting went a great deal faster than expected, and we put in many narcissi, crocuses and irises on the day.  Many have been planted so that they should be visible over the tops of the cars, and the path down should offer a nice vantage point, assuming that the bulbs behave as we would hope.  We think that there should be a decent display - all being well - in the first year, with the colonies of bulbs hopefully increasing year on year.  We were also graced with a visit from a Red Admiral - the local habitat must be doing something right!

Thanks must go to British Rail for their assistance and willingness to help with the project, to the Rotary Club who strimmed the grass back before planting, and also to the local Council who gave a grant towards the purchase of the bulbs.

Apologies once again for the quality of the photographs (this is becoming a regular theme - Ed).  On reviewing the shots we realised that it is very difficult to take a photograph of people planting bulbs without having almost every image including a number of bottoms pointing skywards, all front and centre.  The most popular topic of conversation on the day was the one that went "you can't use *THAT* photo", or less charitably "You'll need a wide angle lens for *THAT*, ha ha".  There is indeed a fine image of Carol's derriere in existence, which we will publish in a future Caption Competition if she does not behave ...