Friends Newsletter Feb 2021

Spring is coming

Gales, snow, rain, mud… and more mud!

Bursting streams and rivers rampaging under ever-changing grey to bright blue skies. There’s been a lot of weather even for Devon, and it’s only Feb!

The result of a ‘lot of weather’ is plenty of action in the garden as the spring brings new life with new buds bursting everyday.

First, a warm welcome to all new Friends and especially to our local carers and their families. We are proud to have secured a matched funding grant from Devon CC to offer free visit vouchers to our local care home teams. The vouchers are valid until the end of the year – so here is a taste of what is in store to enjoy

Thank you to everyone who makes this possible!

Before we get to Paul’s report there are a couple of urgent by date ‘last calls’ and some dates to note in your diary, so please read on..

Snowdrop Day 2021:

If you are able to bring snowdrops (safely within the guidelines) please do!

This year, although we can’t enjoy our snowdrop planting in the garden together, we can still invite our local Friends to bring common Galanthus nivalis for volunteers to plant later. These should be ‘in the green’ from your own gardens, please. If you pop your email on the box we will send you a photo of where they are planted. That way you will be able to find and enjoy them next year – and the next

Our snowdrop display will look better each year as a result

There is no need to let us know in advance just leave plants in the box in the open reception area from now until mid March.

Tea Room – hiring!

Make the most of this Spring & Summer!

The antidote to a long lockdown?

Come and enjoy the fresh air and friendly faces at Stone Lane Garden by working (or volunteering) at the tea room. Fingers crossed, we will be ready (and allowed) to re-open our lovely Tea Room at Easter.

Closing date for manager applications: 28th Feb 2021

Tea Room Manager Job Info

Our funding for this paid position covers 10 hrs pw on a self-employed basis.

The office is not always open during lockdown. So, any questions about the job or about tea room volunteering, please email admin@stonelanegardens.com. We will enjoy calling you back.

Paul’s Garden Manager Report

Mud everywhere!

This time of year, is always extremely muddy but we press on with the ground work and try to remember to look up as well as down.

Experience says we have about 5 minutes from seeing the black rain clouds heading over the tor beyond the polytunnel before the next deluge arrives. Sometimes we are lucky and sometimes not. Despite the mud, the snowdrops and the birds remind spring is coming.

Our garden volunteers have been a big help clearing dead material from the garden and removing some unnecessary trees from areas to give more light for underplanting. They have adapted to new ways of distanced working and somehow still manage to look cheerful despite the conditions! Slippery ground made tractor positioning difficult and we had little choice but to leave material in situ until drier conditions allow us to use the tractor and trailer safely. This year, we experimented with some rubber mats to help us in the particularly slippery areas. These allow repeated trampling across an area without destroying the ground underneath. This has been a good investment, protecting garden and gardeners!

Garden renovation continues with the stream above the top pond now cleared and more home grown candelabra primula planted, taken from our own stock in the polytunnel at South Zeal. Improvements will continue with the newest bridge in place soon and posts and ropes replacing the old hand rails on all bridges around the garden.

Honey fungus continues to be an issue. Recent scientific studies indicate that introducing other fungi of the Trichoderma genus may help to control it. After further research, we are approaching the suppliers of the control products, to see if we can become a trial garden, with results here being included in the datasets. It will be interesting to be involved in the early stages as this knowledge develops. We aim to share details on the website.

Back in the nursery, we have been busy lifting and selling trees since November. I halted shipping in the run up to Christmas for fear of loss or damage during a ludicrously busy time for the carriers. We started shipping trees again later in Jan, with sales appearing good so far and deliveries safe.

We have sold many groups of Stone Lane Garden birches and alders to add to existing woodlands, creating new habitats as they mature. This year for the first time, I introduced packs of 9 trees, promoted as a ‘mini-woodland’ on the website. This seemed to spark fresh interest, with our Betula ‘Fascination’ hybrid now sold out through this scheme, all to local buyers so far. The hybrid cultivar Betula ‘Kerscott Charm’ (featured in our Friends’ Trees article later) is still available.

Grafting continues with the process of sending off scion wood (that’s the twigs that we cut off our stock trees to use for grafting) to our specialist, Richard Bacon.

Hopefully, this year, lockdown will not get in the way of the return of the successful grafts – some of you will remember the mayhem of last year’s potting on!

The rootstocks for our in-house grafting arrived earlier this month. Each year, we undertake some careful grafting of some of the more vulnerable trees in our collection. The grafting has gone well so far with all early signs good. I look forward to sharing progress as they grow and are ultimately planted out.

Looking ahead, it will soon be time to start potting up some of our herbaceous plants. Some will add to our own displays and others will be grown on for sale outside the tea room – some warm day soon, we hope.

We have also taken a few moments to look back, too. I would like to thank our garden neighbour and Friend, David Slocombe and his son Phil, for all they have done over the years, firstly for June and Kenneth and then the charity. David’s grazing tenancy comes to full term at the end of February in time to allow planting and preparation for the new arboretum and wildflower meadow areas to begin.

So, on to the new arboretum! Duncan produced some great ideas for the concept plan and Keith and I now have the go ahead to start implementing the plan. The initial planting begins in March. It is wonderful to start to see real progress on this project and I can’t wait to start planting with the help of our volunteer team who are all very keen to get started!

Barry’s meticulous rotovator rebuild continues as Stone Lane Garden’s answer to TV’s The Repair Shop – we are all looking forward to the reveal and first use in the spring. Finally, and a bit more seriously, although we try hard to minimise the impact of Covid-19 in the garden, some of us here, like you, have been affected personally. I would like to close this by sending our best wishes to all our Stone Lane Gardens Friends and extended family, Paul.

Sculpture in the Garden and Ashburner Prize 2021

Sculpture at Stone Lane 2021

Thanks to very kind donations by individual Friends, topped up to save the day by local Independent Financial Advisor and Friend Bob Burch, we will be able to award the first Ashburner prize without any call on the Garden funds. This is a huge achievement in such a short time. It is also a real boost to our efforts to recognise and support our artists in this tough year.

We already have strong interest in the 2021 Sculpture Exhibition but do not want anyone to miss out on this special opportunity. If you have any contacts to suggest or names to put forward – now is the time.

Ashburner Prize Entries

With a last push to make contacts with local artists before the deadline on 28th Feb, Nick and Paul were interviewed by Radio Devon and Cornwall. Listen again via BBC-Radio-Devon-Stone-Lane-Gardens.mp4

Sandy has also been hard at work reaching out to sculptors and organisations, related to SW sculpture, via Social Media.

The selection panel led by the Garden’s long term Friend and sculptor, Royal Academician Peter Randall-Page will meet in early March to review the entries in the garden and make the decision.

Prize for Sculpture – 1st June 2021

Please put this date in your diary!

The first Ashburner prize for sculpture will be awarded to the winning sculptor at the Preview event, for artists and Friends. Please look out for your invitation!

Friends’ Trees

Our series on Friends’ Trees continues with this visit to the garden of Jessica Duncan

The trees that grow in the garden of Jessica and Peter Duncan are evidence of a love of birches that started in 1970. That was when Jessica first saw Betula utilis subsp jacquemontii and Betula ermanii, in Beth Chatto’s Essex garden. Some years later, the Duncans moved to Devon and visited Stone Lane Gardens – and from that moment, Jessica was hooked.

At home in north Devon, she planted birches and many other trees and shrubs in a garden she created from a farmyard and field, and which she opened to the public under the National Garden Scheme. In between times, she helped to design a large private garden in the south-east of England where she specified birches that had been grafted from Stone Lane Gardens wood.

In 2015, the Duncans moved to an old house near Chagford where a different kind of gardening happens. The sloping garden and field, which face each other across a swift-flowing brook, are largely left to their own devices with minimal, careful intervention to enhance specific insect habitats. Native trees have seeded and Jessica has added extra Betula pubescens and Betula pendula, as well as willow from her own cuttings. In one corner of the land is a rare birch that owes its existence to some teamwork between Jessica and Kenneth Ashburner.

On a visit to Stone Lane, Jessica received from Kenneth a pot of tiny seedlings he had collected. She pricked them out, sorted them by leaf shape and vigour and gave many to friends.

One particularly vigorous sapling she kept and planted separately in her north Devon garden. It has since been identified as a hybrid of Betula ermanii and probably Betula pendula and named ‘Kerscott Charm’ by our manager, Paul Bartlett.

Many thanks to Annabel Crowley for researching and sharing this story

Bids and grants

Since the last newsletter, work behind the scenes has enabled us to offer free visits to local care home teams.

New Grants and Bids volunteer, Chris Griffiths, made a successful bid to Devon CC for £750 in ‘matched funding for entry fees’ for local care workers. That funding allowed us to produce and distribute 140 vouchers locally.

It’s a delicate balance between supporting others by keeping entry fees low while needing every penny to keep us afloat. That is especially true with so few visitors during lockdown. Each voucher entitles one visit for a carer + their own children + a friend or adult family member.

The people who care for those we love need some respite too and we are glad to offer that space.

Chris’s experience and positive input make a big difference to the time-consuming process of working out which grants may be available. Equally importantly, he is good at getting them over the line, accurately, in good time! There are no guarantees, so the hunt is always on. We are currently awaiting feedback from the Culture Recovery Fund and Dartmoor LEAF. Not all volunteer hours are in the garden..

The next project is small but important. We aim to secure a modest grant to install an electric car charging point, for staff and volunteers.

It will be a fantastic achievement to run the charge point, and tea room in summer, from our own Solar Array. This photo was taken mid Feb this year. The panels are in action under a flash of blue sky and sun!

We are now researching ways to address long term storage both for energy and equipment and safeguard our lovely old buildings with basic repairs. Protecting our infrastructure allows us to focus on and enjoy the charity’s objectives

Sometimes it is good to remember the big picture – so we can see the wood through the trees!

Your ideas and support could be helpful here too. You may have contacts and ideas that we can explore. Please do get in touch. We can always do more together.

Dates and updates

Event updates

Since we are all waiting for news of the next stage of lockdown our event dates are still flexible, at this stage.

This is a guide for good things to come in spring to early summer:

Feb – March:

Snowdrop planting until Mid-March

Ashburner Prize selection

Sat 27th March – Easter Tea Room re-opening

April:

Moor Otter arrives

May:

Music in the garden – ‘Low key’ Friends playing informally outdoors (dates tba)

Wed 26th May – World Otter Day – Follow the Dartmoor Trail

June:

1st June – Sculpture Exhibition Preview and award presentation

Annual Sculpture Exhibition opens to the public

Music in the garden – ‘Low key’ sessions continue informally outdoors

We will adapt – as things change – so that we can offer as much space and fun as possible in 2021

Advance Notice – 1st Birch Festival September 2021!

We send our best wishes and warm thanks to our Friend Rose-Marie Stidson who had to step down from her trustee role last year.

We are delighted to report that, after a break to shield her health and family, Rose-Marie will be back to organise Stone Lane Garden’s first ‘Birch Festival’ this September. So – anyone with ‘birch craft’ contacts please get in touch with Rose-Marie asap via admin@stonelanegardens.com and let’s make it something very special!

Social Media – saving the Marmite for last

Social Media – Love it or leave it – we often fall into two camps

Those of you on social media can connect with us on the following platforms:

Look out for these icons on our website (including at the bottom of this page!) and click on them to jump over to our social media platforms.

We use our social media presence to post regular updates on the arboretum and discuss some of the seasonal highlights you can look out for on visits to the garden. Some Friends have asked for more details about how they can follow us which we will include in a separate email so we can give you plenty of info on how to get involved with us online.

Look out for ‘Sandy’s Social Media info’ in the subject line of your next Friends’ email to enjoy her updates – screenshot below as a taster!

We hope that covers any Marmite moments!