Digging Deep

We returned to Marston Forest Garden last month post-lockdown and did a lot of digging. This month the range of tasks for our monthly work party was similar and an equally good work out (especially for those who spent yesterday afternoon shovelling and wheelbarrowing at Boundary Brook Nature Park)!

Jobs were divvied up on the basis of footwear - the ones wearing wellies being assigned the pond digging task, and those with less waterproof footwear set to work enlarging and extending the trench around the Medicine Circle which we started on our first visit.

The trench is needed in order to create a fertile circle for herbs and other medicinal plants, so once dug it will be part-filled with twigs and short branches - expertly lopped to appropriate lengths by Milly - and the soil refilled on top. This will create many years worth of nutrients for the plants as the wood rots down. As it turns out, digging the trench is both harder and slower work than it might seem, not least thanks to layers of plastic sheeting in the top layers of the soil from when the area was used as a dumping ground. Nonetheless, 2 hours of graft made good progress, even if it wasn't fully finished by the end of the session. Sadly less opportunity to use the mattock this month, but there's always next time....

Over at the pond Talitha and Anna dug down to the water table, enlarged the pond, chatted politics (defying the old adage to always avoid discussing religion or politics) and Anna even got trusted with the Lazy Dog for bramble root removal.

Great to see the continued development of this Forest Garden - it's come on leaps and bounds since we first visited!