Claire Wilson and Vic Johnstone are local residents and are known nationally for their work on Verbascum a plant that grows wild in Hampshire but over hundreds of years has been admired by gardeners. Vic and Claire have resurrected lost varieties and produced new ones that now sell in the horticultural trade.
Verbascum
Claire and Vic raise locally provenanced seed and plant them out on the meadow.
With best scientific tradition they list plants using the Latin names and provide photographic records. Users of the meadow whether they be people or bees may not know who is providing the end results but all caring users will be grateful.
Our natural habitat on the meadow naturally attracts creatures that sometimes erode the efforts of human beings. Our aim is not to exterminate them but some control can help. We try to eliminate moles from the Ogham Circle as that is where people gather and need not to trip over. Elsewhere we aim to plug into another of Nature’s devices and that is to encourage wildflowers on the molehills.
Rabbits are very numerous all around town so we do protect some of our new plantings. Again our aim is not to exterminate them. Many country traditions like catching and eating rabbits and making coats out of moleskins have gone so we have to resort to netting.
We cannot do some things without funding so a key part of the Trustees responsibility is trying to get support.
POWER TO OUR ELBOWS. 7TH APRIL 2011.
Local electrician John Downes is busy installing the 5 double plug points in the secure cabinet ready for our forthcoming Maytime celebrations and the SSE Electric Company’s visit to lay power on next week. A combination lock will secure the plug points.
Following upon the successes of recent grants for improvements to the Meadow, the trustees recently decided to launch a scheme to involve our supporters more. We want them to help us build a regular income to help cover regular costs, such as insurance and mowing, for which there are normally no grants to be had.
The treasurer has developed a simple appeal letter and standing order form that will be given to known regular Meadow friends. We will also be approaching local businesses in a similar vein. We, of course, will welcome anyone who gets in touch with us to help in this way.
Success in this venture will underpin the Meadow’s finances into the future for the benefit of all local residents and visitors to Whitchurch.
Update: You can now donate from this website using PayPal – click DONATE.
Local firm T and M Hardy have been carrying out excavations in the Millennium Green and they have exposed yet more of the rich archaeological heritage of Whitchurch.
Flint is a part of our heritage and much remains hidden in the earth below us.
Ancient water bottle
They have exposed another example of the early Stoneage Bicycle. One was discovered on the same site in 2008 but the recent discovery is more modern. The first discovery had a square wheel at the rear but this one has evolved closer to the one we are familiar which has two round wheels. Local volunteer archaeologist Gareth Evans was present when the detail was exposed after the contractors had left the site.
There is a clue that cyclists did get hot and take an early form of water bottle with them. Near to the bicycle we believe an old farming cyclist left a branded bottle designed to appeal to ploughmen as it has the word OXO on its side.
Stoneage Bicycle and a cat flap
Local Cycle Training expert John Buckley noticed the absence of brakes , pedals and lights and said how much safer cycling had become since these later innovations had been invented .
Another discovery is made from porcelain with a beautiful wooden door on the front and is thought to be perhaps some form of cat worship and the origin of the design of later but simpler cat flaps.
They will remain in position for the weekend as archaeologists may insist on them being removed to a local or national museum.
The first stage of the Lottery Funded works has been completed. The Dog Proof fence is in place and the area around the Ogham Circle, where the ground has been consolidated by plastic mesh and hard stuff, has been surfaced with fertile soil and sown with grass seed.
Seeded!
In the second week of April the Electricity Board will erect a pole and bring power to the Millennium Green and the access points installed ready to take the boxes with their plugs.
Access plinth
With the contractors departed from the area near the Fish Gate a new line of screening shrubs has been planted and Child Minder children planted wildflowers.
Children planting flowers
Jeff Geary whose dog tested our dog-proof fence and found it could get through the far gate volunteered to raise the level of the path inside it so his dog must stay with his owner all the time he is in the meadow.
New shrubs
All the work has been done to a very high standard and it is a credit to local workers.
It will soon go but the temporary pipe stuck out of the ground ready for the electric supply is a wonderful thing for children to shout down as an echo returns.
Temporary pipe ready for the electric supply
Hardys are coming full circle on the Ogham Circle.
The finishing surface is going smoothly into place. Next grass seed will be sown.
New dog-proof fence has been completed by Hardys!
Disabled bay cleared
New fence near the footpath gate
Taking care of the tree during the fence construction
It was with some symbolic significance that we installed The Ogham Circle in 1999. Its diameter is 19.99 metres to celebrate the year.
Like the peripheral paths round the meadow a base of skelpings (crushed stone) lies beneath a layer of gravel and grass so we have a surface that people can walk on all year round without getting bogged in.
The Ogham Circle was put in place so we could firmly define an area for events where long grass is not ideal. The Ogham Circle is kept mown and sometimes in the shape of a Classic Maze.
The path around the outside has not proved wide enough for the increasing numbers of small vehicles bringing things on site for events. The mobile laboratory also needs more firm ground beneath.
So we are widening this and a layer of crushed stone will be overlaid with gravel and then special plastic re-inforcement into which special compost and grass seed will be placed. A local contractor working as part of our recent Lottery Grant is doing the work which by mid summer will be totally hidden.
Plastic sections to be laid flat and filled with top soil so grass can be sown in it
Ready to go!
Things are beginning to grow but why ? The plants are not looking at the calendar but they are sensing two important things. One is the temperature of course and it is getting warmer but there is something else that the plants sense and that is the day length. Responding to just one could be risky as we see from the records of temperatures over the years, they go up and down for the same time of the year although there is the underlying gradual rise that hints at global warming. If for some crazy reason it is very warm early and the day length is not right the plants hold back as a safety precaution. If the poles shift again we are in deep trouble.
Horticulturalists have known about this for ages and it is used in the horticultural industry to promote flowering. Plants in greenhouses can be given artificial light mixes so that instead of growing their stems up to a great height, too big to prevent flopping over when they flower, they produce lovely flowers on short stems saleable in the florists.
So having got an acceptable set of signals that say “grow” the plants prepare to grow but first they have another important question “What to grow ?”.
In the previous year as the sun shone and shone it hit the leaves and branches and a chemical called a flowering hormone was produced inside the plant. This chemical is positively affected by gravity to some extent so it tends to gather in buds and stems. If a stem is really vertical the general reason is that it is so because the plant is aiming to get as high as it can. Flowering hormones tend to run down and into the root system where it does not work. So these stems are not subject to the same signals that come from the more level branches or ones that have been exposed to hormones for years. The flowering hormone gathers in such places.
So when the plant gets the signal to grow the next question is “grow what ?” If there is flowering hormone present the new shoot will be a flowering shoot, if not it will be a leafy shoot.
Look at the shoots on the meadow. Flowering buds are swelling but not generally near the tips as this part of the plant is more vertical and did not get sun for a long period last year. On some plants shady inner parts do not bear flowers. The messages are being sent as we read this and those messages are being sent night and day.
The flowers we will see in abundance this spring will have been made possible by the rays of the sun hitting the plants last year.
Those who understand pruning prune their plants to optimise the benefits provided by nature.
By Graham Burges
Matthew starts the works
Hardys will be starting work today on the fence along Winchester Road; they
will be clearing vegetation along fence line (chipping as necessary)
removing old fence and taking offsite (some recycled) and replacing with new
starting at Fish gate completing one section at a time so as not to leave
frontage open except where working.
Large ash tree across boundary to
remain: fence to abut either side.
Improvements | Katya April 26, 2011 | 
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