11th May 2023 • The HERALD • Page 55 v SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SPECIALISTS v RYAN FENCING Quality Fencing & Gates 07769 706516 • 023 8084 1203 www.ryan-fencing.co.uk • Find us on Facebook ✿ DOWN THE GARDEN PATH ✿ • HEDGE CUTTING • FENCING • PATIOS • TURFING • GARDEN CLEARANCES & MORE For a FREE quotation please call 023 8122 4550 or 07548 355262 AUTUMN LEAF GARDEN WORKS A J GLEESON BUILDING & GROUNDWORK DRIVEWAYS EXTENSIONS BRICKWORK GROUNDWORK BLOCK PAVING Colours & Designs to suit your requirements Local Work Available to View CALL FOR A FREE QUOTATION New Forest & Southampton 023 8084 4180 Mobile: 07770 771475 Bramdene, Main Road, Dibden, Southampton Telephone Richard 023 8084 9637 | Grass Cutting | Edges Trimmed | Hedge Trimming | PRESSURE WASHING OF DECKS, PATIOS & DRIVES | FENCE & SHEDS PAINTED QuickSmart Garden Services Professional & Reliable Blackfield Gardening Club by Patricia Hedley-Goddard On Tuesday 11th April the Black eld Gardening Club held their monthly meeting at e Good Shepherd Church in Holbury. Despite the dreadful stormy and gale force winds, the club had a good attendance to listen to Geo Hawkins talk about Wild Flowers. Geo is a brilliant and natural speaker, not needing any notes to use as ‘aide memoirs’ to accompany his power point presentation. He had many amusing anecdotes as well as being a fount of knowledge on his subject with an obvious love for wild owers. He commenced his talk with the words ‘Too many people look at their phones or are wearing their earplugs to notice what you can see from the footpath’. All you need to do is to LOOK around you and you will see a vast variety of wild plants and owers, all having a particular part to play in the natural world. His presentation covered woodland plants, hedgerow plants and meadow plants. He also spoke of damp or water loving plants including sea side plants, heath and mountain plants, and many others which had speci c functions. Starting o with the woodland plants he mentioned the snowdrops, showing a wonderful photo of the snowdrops covering Wellford Park. ese are followed by bluebells, the English bluebell having a much darker blue colour than the Spanish one. English bluebells droop downwards and are only on one side of the stem, compared with the Spanish bell which circles the stem and o en has its bell facing upwards. Other early woodland plants are the primrose, the wood anemone, and in the deep woodland one may be able to spot the pretty purple toothwort which is parasitic, living o of the actual roots of trees. ese early owers sustain the insects and bees can nd nectar in some of them. Hedgerow and garden ‘weeds’ such as the dandelion are very important wild owers as they are sources of nectar for bees and many insects. ese insects are also important for the pollination of owering plants. Sweet violets are interesting because a er you have taken the rst sni of their fragrance, you are unable to smell them again. Some wild plants need well drained sunny positions to ourish, such as the cowslip which has been adversely a ected by modern farming methods in many areas. ey ower the same time as the primrose in early spring, along well drained banks and in elds. Field loving wild owers prefer to grow in poor soil, but to see a eld (or even a small patch in a garden) of wild owers consisting of scarlet poppies, blue corn owers, white oxeye daisies and pale blue devils bit scabious is a truly beautiful sight. It was believed in previous eras that if you rubbed the leaves on human skin that had scabies, it would cure the skin complaint; hence the name devil’s bit scabious. e bees absolutely love the ower for its nectar. Geo also mentioned other wild owers believed to cure human ills, in previous times for example, the roots of yellow meadow sweet contain an ingredient used to make aspirin and if you smell it, it smells of Germoline. e leaves of another wild plant called self heal was used to wrap round wounds to aid the healing, as were dock leaves to ease the sting of stinging nettles. Other hedgerow plants mentioned were clematis vitalbu (traveller’s joy) which is the same family as the buttercup, white cow parsley with its frothy white at heads of owers beloved by many insects as well as bees and butter ies. is should not be confused with giant hogweed. e giant hogweed looks like a monster cow parsley plant o en over 6feet tall. However, it is poisonous, and the stems when broken exude a white sap which aggravates human skin and leaves the skin swollen in a painful scarlet rash. Medical help is needed to counteract the injury. Ragwort, o en seen in elds and meadows is dangerous to horses. Horses normally avoid it, but if it is cut and le to dry on the ground, and a horse eats it, the dried ragwort attacks the horses liver. Some of the wild owers which grow in damp or wet streams/rivers such as ragged robin are excellent food for slugs or snails. is used to be called the cuckoo ower as it owered when the cuckoo arrived in England. A nonnative wild ower which is o en seen in the wet conditions is Himalayan Balsam with its vivid pink owers. It is very invasive, and some areas remove it from their waterways. Another pink ower with a tall owering stem is Rosebay Willowherb. is was particularly prevalent a er WW2, very common such as buttercups, daisies, and clovers, some more rare, such as di erent orchid species, all with the essential purpose of keeping the insect population alive, as well as our countryside looking beautiful. Thank you Geoff for an inspirational, amusing and interesting presentation. Black eld Gardening Club meets on the second Tuesday of the month at e Good Shepherd Church in Holbury. All are welcome. e next meeting will be on Tuesday 13th June for a talk by Colin van Ge en titled ‘Lawrence (Before and A er Arabia)’. ey are really looking forward to seeing members and visitors again (visitors £2). Enquiries please call: 023 8024 3795. growing in bomb sites, very o en with buddleia. Geo mentioned various types of thistles and burrs which he recounted with glee, as having thrown at peoples clothes so that they stuck to them as they walked along. Nature’s purpose was for the burrs to stick to passing animals in order to distribute the spread of the parent plant. Geoff mentioned many more wild owers, some
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