Collecting Seeds From Your Gardens

Summer holidays are over and schools are back. The weather has turned cooler and unpredictable, there is the odd hint of autumn here and there. Rather than mourn the passing of the summer season it can help to spend time planning and preparing; taking stock of the triumphs (and disasters) in the garden and embracing […]

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Summer holidays are over and schools are back. The weather has turned cooler and unpredictable, there is the odd hint of autumn here and there. Rather than mourn the passing of the summer season it can help to spend time planning and preparing; taking stock of the triumphs (and disasters) in the garden and embracing the changing seasons.

Throughout the summer months, we spend time continually deadheading summer annuals. This is important to ensure continued flowering for as long as possible. The main aim of an annual plant (one which grows from seed to flower and seed in one year) is to set seed. Once this has happened, as far as the parent plant is concerned, its job is done! If we keep deadheading, the seeds never get a chance to develop and the plant keeps producing new flowers until it is eventually killed by the winter frosts.

However, there comes a point towards the end of the summer when we are not going to get many more flowers, and it is time to think about seed collection. If you let seedheads develop on the plants and collect them when ripe (usually they will have turned a brownish or black colour) you will have a plentiful supply of your own seeds to sow.

It is important to collect ripe seeds on a dry day. Cut off the seedheads and pop straight into a paper bag or a tray and let them sit in a greenhouse or windowsill. The seeds should naturally fall out of the pods, but you may need to gently crush them open to release the seeds. Store in a paper bag or envelope, not plastic, in a cool dry place and remember to note the variety along with date of collection and where you collected from. It can be interesting to look back and see if the same variety of seed grows better from seed collected from one location rather than another.

The advantages of harvesting your own seeds are many. You are building up a collection of plants that grow well in your garden, under those particular conditions, and by growing your own plants, you will be able to choose only peat free composts, reuse your plastic plant pots, use recycled containers or make paper pots. There are no transportation issues and you will save some money. You can share and swap with friends and neighbours, and enjoy the whole process of growing your own plants.

Of course it is not just ornamental plant seeds that can be collected, you can collect seeds from your allotment or back court veggies. Some plants are easier than others; peas and beans are easy, chilies are fun to do, but Cucurbit family (courgettes, squash, pumpkins, cucumbers) are promiscuous and collected seed will rarely give you what you expect unless you ensure the flowers are isolated from others. Real Seeds have a great website with loads of information about seed collection, and many great seeds to buy if you are just getting started on this journey.

Remember to leave some seedheads to develop on the plants and stand throughout the autumn and winter. They will look architecturally stunning in your garden, catching the dew, or frost or snow, and they will feed birds and provide shelter for hibernating insects such as ladybirds.

Gardening jobs to do….or not!

May has not started with the warmth of early summer, we are clinging to the remnants of wintery chill especially at nighttime with temperatures plummeting to zero or below. Challenging times in the gardening calendar as we juggle trays of seedlings still needing the protection of the greenhouse or kitchen windowsill, but desperate to stretch […]

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May has not started with the warmth of early summer, we are clinging to the remnants of wintery chill especially at nighttime with temperatures plummeting to zero or below. Challenging times in the gardening calendar as we juggle trays of seedlings still needing the protection of the greenhouse or kitchen windowsill, but desperate to stretch their roots and put on growth outside. We do expect Spring to throw us some variable weather, but we are increasingly experiencing more extreme weather events as part of the changing climate. Gardeners have to learn to anticipate and adapt to these challenges, but we can also do so much to help reduce our impact on the environment.

Gardens are increasingly important for wildlife and more and more of us are embracing the wilder aspects of gardening, ensuring they providing food, water and shelter within a range of habitats, throughout the year. There are approximately 1 million acres of garden in the UK, with up to half of that grown as lawn. This is potentially a very valuable wildlife haven and Plantlife wants to find out just how important they are. By taking part in ‘No Mow May’, then ‘Every Flower Counts’ survey of your patch at the end of the month we can all help to build a picture of our lawns as wildlife sanctuaries.

Taking part in No Mow May has many benefits; leaving our petrol mower in the shed cuts down on fossil fuels and air pollution, allowing plants to flower provides food for pollinating insects and we can expect to see daisies, dandelions, self-heal, buttercup, clovers, speedwell, longer grass provides places for sheltering insects which in turn provide essential food for the busy parents feeding young birds in the nest. Blackbirds particularly love to forage for food across our lawn.

This year, with the coldest of Springs and a record dry April, it will be interesting to take part and see just how much our lawn has grown in height and diversity.

The plants we choose to have in our gardens have a huge impact on the insects that will come and visit or live on them, and this, in turn, will affect the birds, bats, mammals that choose to make our gardens their home.

We are all busy making sure our gardens are blooming with bright cheery summer flowers, but it will benefit your garden wildlife as well as the planet if you spend some time planning before plundering the garden centres. Not all flowers are equal. As a general rule, simple flowers provide pollen on the stamen and sugary nectar for visiting insects. The fancy doubles have been bred to turn stamen into extra petals, which in turn make the nectaries inaccessible, so no pollinator food. These cultivars are also rarely pollinated so the flowers tend to remain open for longer, another plus for the gardener. However, although they may appear attractive to us, they offer little for wildlife. Of course they are fun to grow, but it pays to consider making sure you include some flowers for the bees too. For example we have dahlia ‘bright eyes’, loved by bees throughout the summer, but the snazzy cacti varieties offer little to pollinators. Just spend some time watching which flowers are buzzing with insects and you’ll know soon what to choose.

By visiting out plant sale kiosk you will be able to pick up some interesting summer annuals, perennial border plants or interesting herbs and edibles to grow at home. These have all been grown here so have had to put up with our erratic weather conditions and will be fully hardy. We don’t use peat in any of our compost mixes and we are introducing take away cardboard containers for you to decant your purchases into. This way we get to keep our plastic pots to reuse time and time again, and you don’t end up with stacks of used pots taking up space in the back of your shed, and less plastic is good news for the climate.

Create a Runner Bean and Nasturtium Tower!

Flowers for pollinators and edibles for you to enjoy! Runner beans and nasturtiums planted in the last few weeks will be too big for their pots now – learn how to pot them on and create a beautiful tower to benefit people and wildlife in your sunny back court or garden.

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Flowers for pollinators and edibles for you to enjoy!

Runner beans and nasturtiums planted in the last few weeks will be too big for their pots now – learn how to pot them on and create a beautiful tower to benefit people and wildlife in your sunny back court or garden.

Grow delicious pea shoots on your windowsill

Grow delicious pea shoots on your windowsill to add to your salad and discover how to start off your runner beans indoors. Find out what is blooming in the gardens in March. Big thank you to our funder The Scottish Government!

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Grow delicious pea shoots on your windowsill to add to your salad and discover how to start off your runner beans indoors. Find out what is blooming in the gardens in March.

Big thank you to our funder The Scottish Government!

How to sprout beans and sow microgreens

Learn about sprouting beans and sowing microgreens for your window ledge- fenugreek seeds, sprouts, microgreens and green lentils. And seeds you can sow indoors in February/ March like chillis.

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Learn about sprouting beans and sowing microgreens for your window ledge- fenugreek seeds, sprouts, microgreens and green lentils. And seeds you can sow indoors in February/ March like chillis.

Volunteering at The Hidden Gardens for Duke of Edinburgh Award

My name is Vicki and as part of my Duke of Edinburgh award, I decided to volunteer at The Hidden Gardens due to the unique volunteering experience it offered and how it differs greatly from regular places to volunteer such as charity shops.

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My name is Vicki and as part of my Duke of Edinburgh award, I decided to volunteer at The Hidden Gardens due to the unique volunteering experience it offered and how it differs greatly from regular places to volunteer such as charity shops. From gardening to helping out at a multitude of events, I have learned a lot of new techniques and met many amazing and courteous people. I have had an enthralling and enjoyable time whilst participating and helping here.

My name is Eilidh and with my friend, Vicki, I volunteered at The Hidden Gardens for the Duke of Edinburgh as a change to the usual volunteering opportunities available for most young people such as helping at charity shops. At The Hidden Gardens we helped out with lots of fun and educational activities.

We helped at weekend gardening: repotting plants into new pots, labelling plants that needed labels, weeding and so much more that if I put it all in it will start to look like a shopping list!

We helped at the “Into the Wild” outdoor events that took place at The Hidden Gardens such as Bat Night, Coffee and Chocolate and Starry Nights. Our main task for each event was to help serve food to visitors. There was a wide variety of food from curry to cake. If we were there early enough, we gave a helping hand in setting everything up before everyone came. At the bat event we helped visitors of all ages make pin badges.

We also had opportunities to take part in the events. An example of something we enjoyed was making truffles because there was a huge range of flavours to try. For the Starry Night event, we thoroughly enjoyed the planetarium and we learned a lot of interesting facts. For bat night, we used meters to detect the frequencies that bats produced. In the end, we saw two bats! In conclusion, we thought that the Into Wild events were interesting and amazing and we are looking forward to any future events.

Weekend Gardening

Vicki: During the weekends, I helped with the gardening. There were a variety of tasks to help out with such raking and refilling flower beds. I have learned a lot about gardening and different species of plants. I have become more social and happy to talk to new people. In addition it has helped me get fitter as well. I would highly recommend this for anyone who enjoys being outdoors and mingling with new people. It is a hefty job but very rewarding and fun!

Eilidh: I really enjoyed the weekend gardening as I got to meet new people and do things in a different environment. This helped me become a better person and gave me the opportunity to meet many wonderful new people. At some points you really needed some muscle for example when someone put too much topsoil in the wheelbarrow!

The Faery Trail

Vicki: One of the events we helped set up was a nighttime event called The Faery Trail. We decorated a blackboard to go at the street entrance to Tramway to catch the attention of passersby to come and see the faeries. The faeries were created by a very talented artist Lucas Chih- Peng Kao and were then projected onto different landscapes such as small hills and tree trunks. The Hidden Gardens was decorated with many pretty lights and lanterns to form a fantasy and magical atmosphere. We helped with handing out leaflets and showing people around. It was a fantastic experience!

Eilidh: At the events normally we would help serve food but at The Faery Trail event we were asked to create the sign that people would see when walking towards The Hidden Gardens. At this event we were given the job of showing people which way to go in the dark and helping to keep them safe. To me this is where I really came out of my shell as I had to meet the public. I was the first face they would see before going into The Faery trail and I had to talk to them. All in all it was a very enjoyable experience and after the DofE award, I will probably continue to volunteer here.

Many thanks to our young volunteers Vicki and Eilidh and accompanying adults who reliably turned up for every opportunity, were happy to try new things and turn their hand to any task we asked them. Thank you!

Pressed Flowers from The Hidden Gardens Decorating Our New Entrance Way

Thanks to our Green Thumbs volunteers, a floral display in our new entrance displays a selection of seasonal flowers and foliage from The Gardens. In the last couple of months, the entrances leading to The Hidden Gardens have had a makeover. A lovely new large metal sign indicates to visitors coming in from Pollokshaws Road […]

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Thanks to our Green Thumbs volunteers, a floral display in our new entrance displays a selection of seasonal flowers and foliage from The Gardens.

In the last couple of months, the entrances leading to The Hidden Gardens have had a makeover. A lovely new large metal sign indicates to visitors coming in from Pollokshaws Road that they are about to enter The Gardens, and our entrance at the back of the Tramway building has been overhauled, with users coming through Tramway and into a kind of foyer, or transitional space, before walking out into the gardens.

The point of this transitional space is to surround visitors with a sense of The Gardens before they actually enter them. The designer of this project suggested that one way to achieve this was by picking and pressing seasonal flowers and foliage from the Gardens, and presenting them alongside the information about the history and role of the space.

Since I have a background in floral design, Paula, our head gardener suggested that this was a project I could take on.Feb_20 (2)

The first task was to create a flower press. Drilling four holes in two pieces of scrap wood left over from building a planter, it was easy to create a large, functioning press. Other volunteers provided bolts, nuts and old newspapers picked up on public transport, with cardboard reused from oversized delivery packaging.

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Paula led the selection of flowers and foliage to be pressed, and we started by focussing on the beautiful hellebores that were flowering abundantly. A quick google established that it was likely to take around three weeks for the plants to be suitably dried out by the press, and so during each weekly Green Thumbs session for around a month I worked to choose, pick and press flowers and foliage that might ultimately look good framed and mounted, as well as changing the paper surrounding them to remove as much damp as quickly as possible.

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Last week we decided that the first lot of pressed flowers were ready to go. Assembling our Green Thumbs volunteer team (among whom we have a designer, an exhibition curator, a woodworker and an art historian), volunteer Marion carefully cut out squares of paper, and we each chose flowers and created a design to sit in one of the eight mounted Perspex squares in the Tramway entrance.

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You can see our efforts for yourself as you walk through to the back of Tramway, into the Hidden Garden foyer, and look at the display to your left. Our longer term goal is to create a library of these pressed flower designs, so that they can be changed with the seasons, indicating to our visitors not only what they can expect to see in The Gardens before they walk through the doors, but also demonstrating volunteer teamwork and our pride in showing off what The Gardens have to offer.

Pausing to ask any of the gardeners and volunteers involved in this project how they feel about their display within the new entranceway, it is amazing how often the response is not only a large smile, but also a desire to talk about how pleased they feel about it, the plants we used and the response they had sharing images of the project on social media:

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“The new entrance gives a flavour of what’s to come upon entering the gardens, bringing a little of the outside in.”

“It’s very engaging and help to create a welcoming entrance to the gardens.”

“The artwork helps to highlight the gardens. Gives a bit of identity.”

“It helps us feel a sense of ownership and belonging.”

“The displays of pressed flowers feels a bit like a scavenger hunt, making me want to look out for the living, outdoor versions of the preserved, indoor ones.”

How we volunteers now experience walking into The Gardens, through the new entrance way, has certainly shifted. We see that our display connects the visitor to the garden, reflects the seasons outside and gives a glimpse of what’s growing. We feel proud of what we’ve created, stopping and looking at our artwork before moving outside through the new doors, and it has helped us feel a sense of belonging to the garden we work hard to maintain.

By Ellie, Volunteer

John Muir Award

I am part of a group of volunteers at The Hidden Gardens who are working towards gaining Level 1 John Muir Award. Named after the Scots born naturalist, who is generally considered to be the ‘Father of Modern Conservation’, the John Muir Trust encourages groups and individuals to become involved with the conservation and protection […]

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I am part of a group of volunteers at The Hidden Gardens who are working towards gaining Level 1 John Muir Award.

Named after the Scots born naturalist, who is generally considered to be the ‘Father of Modern Conservation’, the John Muir Trust encourages groups and individuals to become involved with the conservation and protection of wildlife areas.

Following Muir’s principles the volunteers will work to meet the Trust’s four challenges of: Discover, Explore, Conserve and Share to obtain their award.

Guided by two staff members the group surveyed the gardens for pollinators with a particular focus on butterflies. Different species were discovered and identified and research was done to gain insight into the habitats and plants needed to support their lifecycle. Many of us were not aware that some species, such as Peacock and Small Tortoiseshell overwinter in hibernation as butterflies! Other species hibernate as caterpillars and pupa.

We went on to explore the gardens to determine what was needed to enhance the environment for our butterfly population. We carried out a survey of all the plants to establish which were beneficial for adult and caterpillar food and also looked for plants that would be vital as hibernation sites as many of the pupa secure themselves to plants over winter. Wild areas in the garden were explored to see if there were places, such as log piles, where adult butterflies could hibernate.

Our present and ongoing task is to conserve and develop the gardens so that they become a haven for butterflies! We have a dedicated meadow area which contains many native species such as nettles, meadow grasses and vetches that can often be seen as weeds but are the vital host plants for the eggs of Painted Lady, Ringlet, Orange-tip and many others. This area is managed to maintain a good diversity of plants by selective ‘weeding out’, plant division and seed collection. We learned that the Cuckoo-Flower is host to Small White, Orange-tip and Green-veined White and are now planning to distribute seedlings into the meadow next Spring. One revelation was that many Red Admiral butterflies migrate to Southern Europe in October! As ivy flowers are a late source of nectar for these and other butterflies we now leave the cutting back of Ivy until late winter.

To allow for successful hibernation we have ring-fenced particular wooded areas to remain undisturbed throughout the winter months.

By undertaking the Award scheme the volunteers are now able to share their knowledge with the garden’s many visitors and encourage them in the nurturing of butterfly- friendly habitats. Plants that we have divided or propagated from collected seed will be on sale in the kiosk together with information about their pollinator friendly attributes.

We hope that this sharing of information will result in a healthy diverse population of butterflies in the area.

Roll on Spring!

Greenthumbs volunteers

Bone Meal, Glasgow International 2018

From Friday 20th April- Monday 7th May there was an exhibition, event and performance entitled ‘Bone Meal’ running at The Hidden Gardens as part of Glasgow International 2018. Bone meal brings together six Glasgow based artists to show new work at The Hidden Gardens.  Using performance and writing to develop sculpture, sound, and video installations, […]

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From Friday 20th April- Monday 7th May there was an exhibition, event and performance entitled ‘Bone Meal’ running at The Hidden Gardens as part of Glasgow International 2018.

Bone meal brings together six Glasgow based artists to show new work at The Hidden Gardens.  Using performance and writing to develop sculpture, sound, and video installations, our work engages with the living and life-supporting elements of the garden.  (Glasgow International 2018, Festival Guide, p.57).

We interviewed two of the artists/ performers Suzanne and Amy whose work was called “Time Pieces”

What is the inspiration for the installations?

The formed space of the Garden itself and its geometrics and the tools we have been working with allows for playful interaction with the Garden’s space, each other and the tools.

Why is the exhibition important?

It brings six different Glasgow artists together and invited outside artists for a collaborative project. It allows a series of pieces ‘to happen’, when you have this opportunity.  An idea gets to be manifested, working with your own time, not clock time, realising a different sense of time and finding your own time in nature.

What do you hope the public take from the exhibition?

We want to invite people to keep their own time too, it’s important for people to see that art and play can be the same thing. Working together allows artists to reflect off each other.

How has the experience of working together over these years changed the way you work?

Both of us have developed a new sensibility through a shared understanding, paying attention to an intimate close relationship, rather than a global context of social media and inter connectivity, trying to stay connected through art.

The exhibition was interesting and thought provoking, we would like to thank all of the artist’s for their contributions and hard work.

James, volunteer

Scotrail planters

Bees, butterflies and moths have quite limited options for food in the city but, Pollokshields East train station’s mixed planters are a delectable buffet with their choice of nectar-rich flowers, such as the verbena and lavender. Many of the plants, for example the ivy, provide a helpful habitat for tiny insects and other little creatures. […]

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Bees, butterflies and moths have quite limited options for food in the city but, Pollokshields East train station’s mixed planters are a delectable buffet with their choice of nectar-rich flowers, such as the verbena and lavender. Many of the plants, for example the ivy, provide a helpful habitat for tiny insects and other little creatures.

Our volunteers, who do most of the planting, take great pride in keeping their local train station looking and smelling great – all that lavender and rosemary is quite a treat for the senses! They are keen to play a part in supporting the area’s biodiversity and often comment on this.

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Driven by feedback from volunteers, the planters are all quite visually different. The range of wildlife-friendly plants include pretty flowers and structural evergreens, with grasses and some familiar herbs. There are also plants with interesting textures, such as the incredibly soft lamb’s ear.

Through maintaining the Pollokshields East planters, our volunteers learn how to maintain wildlife-friendly raised beds. That knowledge can then be used in their own garden space. And for those without their own garden, they get the therapeutic benefits of both working with plants and doing something positive for the local community, their community. Passengers sometimes stop and ask us for the names of certain plants, and on occasion we’ve had passengers stop to thank us for what we’re doing

Lynne, Garden Assistant & Volunteer