Walking along the high street there are plenty of planted containers filled  with interesting and colourful plants adding interest to the town. Colour spilling from half barrels and troughs along the lord’s waist and outside our historic buildings all adding such cheer during these difficult times.

The Ullenhall & Henley Gardening Club is hoping that later on this year it may be able to start holding meetings in the hall again. We shall have to see how government rules change as the vaccines begin to improve the Covid 19 situation. In the meantime, here are things of interest for this season.

The RHS says that now is the time to cut back ornamental grasses to within a few centimetres of the ground. In my garden I’ve been trimming back roses and dead stalks of some perennials. I need to dig out the last of the compost from my heap of 3 years ago ( I have a three year rotation of my heaps) and spread it on my vegetable patches.

I’ve been out to see what plants are showing their best in the garden just now. The only edibles I have left in the garden are some purple sprouting broccolli plants and they have about two meals worth of tops left. They’ll then get pulled up and popped onto the compost heap. We have a couple of wild plum trees on the edge of our garden, which are now in full bloom spreading a confetti of petals. There are also white flowers in the hedge adjacent to the field, where wild plum is interspersed with holly, hawthorn and other woodland plants. Our Verbena

Bodnatese is still flowering and has a nice strong scent wafting through the garden. The forsythia is showing yellow blooms, the daffodils are out; the traditional ones together with miniatures and white and orange narcissi. The large hellebores are still going strong and the big cushion of purple heather looks good.

I’ve been checking up on what seeds I have left over from last year and  I don’t appear to have many at all. So, I’m trying to decide which varieties of which vegetables to buy. I need to get a move on. I don’t think I’ll do leeks this year as the new leek leaf miners got into them last year and caused me a lot of bother every meal time, digging out the many little maggots from every leek before cooking them. I’ll probably grow broccolli, lettuces, courgettes, runner beans, french beans, tomatoes and cucumbers. Maybe cabbage and Brussles sprouts. I’m not going to bother with squash, as one plant takes up so much room and only seems to produce 2 or maybe 3 fruits. I’ll do some potatoes again.

Cosmos genarally grows well here, so I’ll get some seeds again. I think I’ll get sweet Williams, as I

have always loved the smell and the look of them. Nasturtiums are good value and perhaps I’ll try some pansies. Last time, my pansies didn’t thrive, but they do have lovely faces, don’t they?

I’m looking at the seed catalogues and choosing varieties that are F1 vegetables and / or are listed as ones having the RHS Award of Garden Merit (AGM).

Now that spring is here, don’t just enjoy your own garden; when you go out for a walk, look into other gardens and enjoy them as well.

Almost Local News:  How to cut Carbon in Warwick District -

Warwick District Council, which declared a climate emergency in 2019, recently appointed a senior officer, Dave Barber, to lead the District’s climate action.  His official title is “Programme Director for Climate Change”.  (We assume they do not mean this literally!)

Climate issues permeate all that lies ahead of us and the field is dauntingly complex, so a representative panel of local people was set up to draw out a valid view of priorities from the people of the District.

To do this, a community interest company called Shared Future (https://sharedfuturecic.org.uk/) was engaged. They wrote to 5000 Warwick residents to determine who might be interested to take part in such an exercise.  500 responded positively and this response was boiled down to a “jury” of 30 individuals who then gave their time to debating the issues and presenting their conclusions. The composition of the jury reflected the district’s mix of age, gender, ethnicity, geography and attitude to the climate issue. The question addressed by this group was: “What do we need to do in the Warwick district to help address climate change by 2030?”

Expert advice was provided where deeper knowledge of subjects was required. The jury recently delivered the results of its deliberations on how Warwick should respond to the climate emergency.  There was a high degree of agreement among the jury members.

Expert advice was provided where deeper knowledge of subjects was required. The jury recently delivered the results of its deliberations on how Warwick should respond to the climate emergency.  There was a high degree of agreement among the jury members.

The scope of the jury’s recommendations extended to 37 subjects covered in considerable detail.  This is but a selection from the current draft of their report:

Transport:  improving facilities for cycling and walking. Traffic management including safety and the separation of motor from other.  Moving bus travel into a new era of quality and service.  Motivating transport sharing; possibly consider a bike rental scheme.  Creating an adequate electric vehicle charging network across the district.

Housing: insistence on carbon neutrality for all new housing proposals.  Retrofitting of existing public buildings and a scheme for supporting the retrofitting of private housing.

Waste and Recycling:   a centrally managed facility for the elimination of waste and the encouragement of re-use.  Disincentives for waste in supermarkets and large stores. 

Information and Advice: creating much more active, centrally driven and co-ordinated and better information on all relevant fields of activity. High impact publicity and a coordinated and collaborative communications campaign across all media.

Carbon recapture: Development of a strategy for the creation and use of green space, using all available council-owned and private land in the district.

Finance and control of the whole programme:  appropriate financial measures and reviews, taking account of all local and national policies and criteria; exploration of funding opportunities, such as business participation. Installing a structured monitoring and progress evaluation system with a requirement for regular reporting of progress.

Of course, a statement of what is needed is not the same as a result achieved: the road to hell is paved with good intentions! Nevertheless, without a plan – and some drive – good progress is unlikely.  In their move towards working together and possible amalgamation, it has been agreed that Warwick’s climate change officer will also act for Stratford District, which is some way behind Warwick in its Climate Emergency actions. Although the sharing only commences officially in April, he did make a presentation at the recent meeting of Stratford District’s Climate Panel. Let’s hope he can help Stratford catch up with Warwick in its actions. It’s 20 months since Stratford District Council declared a Climate Emergency and not a lot has happened yet!!!  Compare SDC and WDC who both declared emergencies at about the same time. WDC appointed a Program manager and engaged a citizens panel.

In addition to the detailed recommendations mentioned above, a summary statement was written by a group of jury members and then edited and discussed by the rest of the jury. 27 (out of 30) jury members voted on the recommendations. 21 strongly supported the statement, 3 supported it, 2 people neither supported nor opposed it and 1 strongly opposed it. 

The statement starts and ends as follows :-

“We are just a group of ordinary people from the Warwick District. We are a diverse group who were randomly selected to join this Climate Change Inquiry. We have different viewpoints but have reached a shared understanding.  ………………………. 

We believe that solutions are out there already; we just need to make them happen. ………….  

The District Council and others must look for every opportunity to influence those who have a role in our district.  We must make this happen and the frameworks must be in place to make sure that there is accountability (named people) and monitoring (performance indicators) so that everybody can check progress.

THIS IS AN EMERGENCY”

For the full Warwick report :- Click here