Glasgow Guerrilla Gardening

Thanks to three rather unenexpected and very generous donations received over the last week we are now very close to our target of 10,000 bulbs!

To hit our final target all we need are 900 Wood Anemone or Anemone White Splendour and just 500 English bluebells.

This is an amazing achievement for an unfunded group. If you can help us out with the last 1300 bulbs please get in touch before December 31st.

Some dates for the diary for the first three months of 2010.

January 9th 11:30am -Townhead

January 31st 11:30am -Townhead

February 13th 11:30am -Townhead

February 27th 11:30am -Townhead

March 13th 11:30am -Venue to be confirmed

March 27th 11:30am -Townhead

Hope to see you all there. In the meantime there’s still lot’s to do in 2009- meeting dates here.

A wet Wednesday in November might not seem like the most obvious time to be giving thought to helping out bees but like many gardeners I always have a beady eye on the next season.

There is a great deal on the internet about making your garden attractive to bees but much of tends to be long lists of flowers without much information on when they bloom and where is best to plant them. It’s good advice and well worth following however my attention for the time being is firmly focused on the bees lean season in the early spring.

Gardens don’t become a riot of colour, offering abundant nectar and pollen sources for bees until the summer but the poor souls still need a meal in the spring and hurrah for nature, there is lots to plant that will bring a bit of early colour to your garden and keep the bees well fed.

Crocuses and Snowdrops are a good source of early nectar and pollen and provide one of the years first signs that there might be an end to this terrible darkness, misery and cold. Winter flowering heathers should still be in bloom very early in the spring and provide another source of food. As indeed do my personal favourites the Hellebores which provide both nectar and pollen as well as treating us to flowers from winter to spring and beautiful, glossy leaves all year round.

To bridge the gap between early spring and summer Grape Hyacinths are a very pretty, easy to grow choice that will keep the bees coming. Grape Hyacinths are particularly impressive planted in vast drifts which if done properly will seem from a distance more like a mysterious blue haze hovering over the ground than flowers. Planted at fortnightly intervals from September to December these should be in bloom up until May after which the choice is endless for keeping bees happy.

There are of course many, many more varieties you can plant throughout the year. Nevertheless with very little effort you can keep our Bumblebees fat from Spring to Autumn. A little simple planning is all it takes to ensure you have a bit of early colour and the bees have somewhere to feed. This is one of the best online guides I’ve found for ensuring your garden has a wee morsel or two for the liitle gentleman in the striped fur coats.

Whilst we’ve always aimed to garden in a bee friendly fashion on all our sites and been rewarded with some very impressive bees. Next year we aim to do even better with all our fundraising and activity being directed towards establishing at least one new bee friendly garden in each quarter of the city as well as maintaining what we have. 2010 will be our busiest year since starting up in 2008 and there are lots of ways you can help out from propagating to planting to general garden stuff. If you’d like to nominate a site for a bee garden in your part of Glasgow or help out with our existing sites please email here for further details.

Tags: bees, crocuses, gardening, grape hyacinths, guerrilla gardening, heathers, hellebores, next year, planting, snowdrops

Let’s start off with a massive thank-you to all who braved the hellish weather at the weekend to get some more bulbs planted. Despite the low turnout and my abduction by the press an impressive amount of work was done with hundreds more bulbs planted.

Next week we’ll be back to our usual time of 11:30am up at Townhead and as ever there’s loads to do. This week should see the winter aconites and the last of the grape hyacinths planted. In addition I’ve been given a bag of daffodils and post permitting should have 1000 snowdrops, 50 wood anemone and 100 English Bluebells to add to the display.

We’ve done well to raise the funds we have but sadly we’re still short of our 10,000 target by some way. The council were in touch recently and made positive noises about helping us out with some tulips and daffodils which should hopefully see us reach our individual targets on those flowers. However we still urgently require 900 English Bluebells, 950 Wood Anemone and 300 Snakeshead Fritallaries. If the council let us down then we’re also still short by 600 mixed daffodils and 900 tulips. A total shortfall of around 3650 bulbs.

If you would like to donate to our funds then please do so via paypal. If you’d prefer to bring some bulbs along then we’ll be accepting donations of bulbs at Townhead if you’d like to come along and drop them off. We’ve only got until 31st December to meet our target and have done well despite some recent setbacks. It would be a shame to come this far and fall short so if you have any spare cash or bulbs we really would be very grateful for your donations.

We’ll be up at Townhead on Saturday 21st Nov at 11:30am, Saturday 28th November at 11:30am, December 5th 11:30am, December 12th 11:30am, December 19th 11:30am and Wednesday 30th December at 12pm. If you’d like to come along to any of these events with some bulbs of the still needed varieties, some gloves and trowel or bulb planter you’ll be more than welcome.

Tags: 2009, dates for the diary, fund raising, glasgow, glasgow city council, guerrilla gardening, help, ten thousand bulb challenge, townhead