Parks and Recreation

Knypersley Reservoir

I've often taken time out from gardening to enjoy walking in the glorious countryside of North Staffs, South Cheshire and the Peak District.  We're fortunate to have several lovely country parks with lakes - some natural, some reservoirs, some reclaimed - fairly close to our home, including Astbury Mere, Knypersley Reservoir (Greenway Country Park), Bathpool Park and Westport Lake.

Bluebells, Greenway Country Park

Westport Lake is the only one of these within the boundaries of the City of Stoke-on-Trent and is the second closest to home, as well as being the most accessible in all weathers.  It has the added advantage of being on one of our regular canal routes, the Trent and Mersey to (or from) Stoke-on-Trent, so is sometimes a first or last stop on a journey.

Winter walk around Westport Lake

Considering that it is reclaimed industrial land rather than a natural landscape, the wildlife to be seen on and around it is remarkable, especially in winter when the lake hosts a wide variety of migrating wildfowl, and it was the first place I had the privilege of glimpsing the courtship display of Great Crested Grebes and the only place I have ever been close enough to a wren to snatch a photo.

Great Crested Grebes at Westport Lake

Great Crested Grebes can also be seen at Central Forest Park, another reclaimed wildlife haven with a lovely lake and terrific play area, skate park and family facilities.  If Stoke-on-Trent kids are fortunate enough to have parents or grandparents able to take them to the parks, there is some impressive kit for them to enjoy: I quite envy them!

Central Forest Park

In the last few weeks, we've started exploring the City's traditional urban parks, Victorian-era creations from land donated to the huddled masses by philanthropic industrialists or aristocrats.  I wish I had visited them years ago, when there was more investment in public horticulture.  Stoke-on-Trent City Council's professional gardeners won Gold and Best in Show at a series of RHS Tatton Park Shows in the years after we moved up. 

2010 Stoke-on-Trent Council entry for RHS Tatton Park

Austerity has seen the end of both the competition - although, ironically, money was found to pay contractors from outside the city to build a Chelsea show garden a few years back - and many paid posts.  While I have some sympathy with the trend towards more sustainable and naturalist perennial planting and away from bedding plants in serried rows, there is still something quite magnificent about a bright display of under-planted tulips, locally best done in Queens Garden's, Newcastle-under Lyme.

Despite that, our visits to Tunstall Park and Longton Park have been thoroughly enjoyable.  Both are beautifully laid out and combine planted areas with elegant lakes and generous areas of playing fields and bowling greens, and more excellent play parks.  They seem to be well-used and appreciated by their local communities too. 

Tunstall Park

In Tunstall Park we walked under an arch of cherry blossom and watched newly-hatch coot chicks venturing out of their nest for the first time, under the care of attentive parents. 

In Longton Park, the semi-tame squirrels seemed more than a little put out that we had nothing to feed them, standing indignant as we walked by, and I was thrilled as only a green technology geek can be when I realised the fountain in the lower lake was solar powered!

Longton Park

Both parks deserve visiting again when the summer borders are in flower, so all credit to the staff and volunteers who manage and maintain them.  Burslem Park and Hanley Park - where a lot of restoration work is under way after a successful Heritage Lottery Bid - are next on the list.

A lot of allotmenteering

April showers have kept me indoors, or at least close to the house when gardening, today but it has been a busy week down on our allotment, getting the plot dug over and tidy ready for planting the second-early and main-crop potatoes later this week.

I confess that the allotment tends to be Jon's domain with the routine grass-cutting and digging over done by the little chap, often on my work days, because he likes it to look neat.  I have more of a strategic role usually, working out where things should go as part of the crop rotation system and then abandoning the plan as various crops outgrow their space in the greenhouses or, alternatively, fail.

One task that escaped both of us last year was clearing weeds from the patch we had dug the compost heap out onto and transplanting a mass of self-seeded foxgloves off of another.  Both plots are needed for potatoes this year so, while Jon turned over a couple of the established beds, I brought down my big stainless steel fork and spade and set about turning over and de-weeding the top bed.  The spoil has gone to make a new bank under the hedge behind the shed, incorporating a couple of "Springwatch" washing-up bowl ponds, side-by-side, and planted up with some of the hundreds of rogue foxgloves.  The soil scalped from the top bed also includes nettles which we can cut when young for green manure and later leave for the butterflies where they can now spread and seed without causing a problem.

The broad beans, which had been hardening off in the cold frame, have now been planted out and seem to have settled in well.  Hopefully they are sturdy enough to resist any minor flea-beetle damage although I must get some sticks and string round them soon to stop them toppling over during windy weather.  There is a later sowing just starting to germinate and, if I can keep the beds nicely weed-free in the early stages, I plan to plant some of my squash and pumpkin plants between the rows in early summer, so they can take advantage of the nitrogen-rich soil.

The onions will also be ready to go in soon and will take up most of the next two beds up, leaving two more for direct-sown crops like parsnips, climbing beans, sweetcorn and, perhaps, more squashes, although I will probably concentrate on growing those in the back garden.  The brassicas I have for sowing this year are for winter crops so can follow the first early potatoes in the garden and the first broad beans on the allotment, or possibly even the second earlies if I can keep them growing on in pots, and safe from slugs and butterflies, in the cold frames. 

How any of this plan will fit in with another possible long-distance boat-trip remains to be seen, of course...