The Urbal Fix - Transforming Cities

This is inspiring stuff - "The injection of countryside, or more specifically; green productivity, deep into the heart of our cities."

See http://www.turnstone.tv/theurbalfix.html.

Website of the Month - Campaign for Better Transport

I don't drive, so I travel on foot, by bike and by public transport. I do this largely for environmental reasons, plus the fact that I don't like driving.

Public transport should be cheap and easy to use, to encourage people to make fewer car journeys. But bus services are being cut and train fares are rising steeply, in spite of the Government's claims to be "the greenest Government ever".

So this month's website is the Campaign for Better Transport - an organisation that is doing something about this.

Self-employment: how to set up your company website

There is an excellent article on setting up a website for a small business on The Guardian's website - see http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/jul/22/self-employment-set-up-website. I can thoroughly recommend it to anyone thinking of having a website for their business.

Website of the Month - Landshare

June's website of the month is www.landshare.net.

Landshare links people wanting to grow their own produce with people who have spare land. It was launched in 2009 on one of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's "River Cottage" programmes and now has almost 62,000 members.

 I'm lucky enough to have a back garden and two allotments, plus a community garden, to grow in but not everyone is as fortunate - and this is where Landshare comes in.

Website of the Month - Bees, Wasps & Ants Recording Society

Bombus hypnorum on Salvia 'Mainacht'

The Grapes Hill Community Garden is now planted up and actually looks like a garden. One of the highlights at the moment is Salvia 'Mainacht', a beautiful ornamental sage with violet-purple flower spikes. This is proving to be a great hit with bumblebees. On Tuesday we identified three species, including the beautiful Bombus hypnorum (Tree Bumblebee), which only arrived in the UK ten years ago, and is spreading north.

A Google search quickly found the Bees, Wasps & Ants Recording Society (BWARS) website and I submitted a record.

The BWARS website is website of the month as it has some very helpful factsheets and information on bees (and wasps and ants). With habitat loss these beautiful and fascinating insects need all the help we can give them.

Facebook

I must admit I was a Facebook sceptic for a long time. And I still don't see the need to post lots of trivia on a regular basis.

However, I think Facebook provides a useful way of following particular actions, activities and groups. Here are a couple I've set up:
Grapes Hill Community Garden on Facebook
West Norwich Art Trail on Facebook.

Reluctantly, I think Facebook may even be April's website of the month...

It Cuts Both Ways...The Alternatives

Excellent, positive video which shows alternatives to the Government's austerity measures. See http://vimeo.com/21438134.

Website of the Month - Emorsgate Seeds

This month's website of the month is Emorsgate Seeds, a supplier of wildflower and grass seeds, including mixes for different soil types. For the Grapes Hill Community Garden in Norwich we're going to sow their loamy soil mix and also some cornfield annuals - plants which are hardly seen in the wild these days as agriculture has intensified and seed grading techniques have improved.

Emorsgate Seeds is a very well laid out and informative website and their printed catalogue is really useful too. The seed order arrived promptly - I'm now looking forward to doing some sowing later this month.

Wild Food, Wild Mushrooms, Fishing, Foraging, Recipes

I've just discovered a great blog -Wild Food, Wild Mushrooms, Fishing, Foraging, Recipes, Essex UK. I was looking for Alexanders on the web (a favourite plant of mine) and stumbled upon the site.

It has some really good wild food recipes, from Pan Fried Cod Fillet with Garlic Mustard Mash and Wild Sorrel sauce to Alexanders, Prawns and Chilli with Spaghetti and Wild Cherry Jam Conserve.

I'm starting to feel hungry...

Website of the Month - Write To Them

This month's website is Write To Them, a site that finds your local representative - MP, councillor, MEP, MSP etc. - and allows you to contact them by e-mail or fax. Simply put in your postcode to start.

With the current shower in power, it's time to get writing...

A Day Out In Suffolk

Today we went over the border into Suffolk, but needed no passports as my wife has dual Norfolk/Suffolk nationality.
We looked for Hawfinches around Sotterley Church (unsuccessfully), then headed to Minsmere RSPB Reserve, where we had excellent views of a Firecrest and also saw female Smew and several Pintail. It was warm but rather windy.
Excellent lunch in the Eel's Foot at Eastbridge, acompanied by a superbly kept pint of Adnams' "Oyster Stout".

Sotterley Park

Walking to Sotterley church

Sotterley Park

Sotterley Park

Sotterley Park

Sotterley Park

Beech tree, Sotterley Park

Sotterley church

Winter Aconites

Minsmere

Minsmere

Minsmere Beach

Sea watching, Minsmere Beach

Hedge Planting at Norwich Community Agriculture Site

Last week it was tree planting at Grapes Hill Community Garden and today a group of us planted a mixed hedge of Holly, Blackthorn, Hawthorn, Crab Apples, Field Maple and Hazel along the edge of the Norwich Community Agriculture site at Postwick, just beyond the east of Norwich. We also planted a single Red Oak.

The hedge will provide a windbreak to the west of the field we are renting, which will be used to grow a variety of market garden crops from this summer onwards.

Carrying the trees in.

Planting instructions.

Deciding on the hedge line.

Removing top of turf (to reduce competition with hedge).

Planting starts...

Planting hollies.

We have a hedge!

Putting in stakes.

Planting the Red Oak.

The hedge.

Happy volunteers.

Grapes Hill Community Garden - Tree Planting

Yesterday we planted fruit trees and bushes at Grapes Hill Community Garden, including six apples, two pears, two cherries, a quince, a plum, a medlar, a fig, three grapevines and various soft fruit.

View the complete gallery of tree planting pictures here.

Group photo - planting the first tree

Planting the Medlar

Planting apple trees

Planting the quince

The tree roots are soaked in water prior to planting.

Website of the Month - Norfolk Churches

This month's website of the month is Simon Knott's The Norfolk Churches Site, which has excellent photographs and descriptions of Norfolk's churches - 868 at time of writing.

The site is a wonderful resource and I often visit when I've passed or stopped at a church during a cycle ride in the Norfolk countryside, or linked to from one of the church websites I've built.

For forays south of the border there is a companion site of Suffolk Churches.

Save Our Forests!

The Government is planning a massive sell off of our national forests, which could be auctioned and fenced off, run down, logged or turned into golf courses and holiday villages.

We can't let that happen. We need to stop these plans. National treasures like the The Forest of Dean, Sherwood Forest and The New Forest could be sold off. Once they are gone, they will be lost forever. 

Sign the petition against this at http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/save-our-forests.

See more on the Caught By the River and Hands off our Forest websites. The latter focuses on The Forest of Dean, but closer to home Thetford Forest and Horsford Woods, for example, are also under threat.

Design Different Featured as NWES Success Story

Design Different is now featured on the NWES website as a Success Story.

NWES is an organisation that offers free business start up advice in the East of England. It provides an excellent five day course known as Best Start which provides the skills and knowledge to develop a business plan and manage and grow a business. I can recommend the course very highly.

See the NWES website for more details of this and other courses.

Bindweed Clearance

I spent much of the weekend clearing bindweed roots and pruning Buddleia bushes at Grapes Hill Community Garden, ready for planting fruit trees and bushes on Sunday 23rd January. Sunday's turnout was especially good, with about twenty of us, including members of the Norwich Community Green Gym. The sun even shone!

End of Saturday

Cutting up Buddleia prunings

Clearing roots from the lawn circle

A Proper Sort Of Nursery!

Yesterday three of us from the Grapes Hill Community Garden Group went to Reads Nursery at Hales Hall, near Loddon to look at fruit trees, which we need to buy for the garden.

The nursey is superb - lots of varieties of tree, including local varieties of apples and the national collection of fig trees. The staff are very helpful and knowledgeable too. As if this isn't enough, the nursery's location next to Hales Hall and its beautiful thatched barn is great too.

We will return late next week to make our purchases, including apples, pears, an apricot, cherries, a fig, a medlar, a quince and some soft fruit bushes and canes.

Fig tree

A proper sort of nursery like Reads is a real antidote to many garden centres, which sell fewer and fewer plants and seem to be just plant supermarkets. You can find more good nurseries on the Norfolk Nursery Network website. I will certainly try to visit more of them during the year.

Pete Postlethwaite

Heard the sad news that Pete Postlethwaite died yesterday, aged 64.