Category: Uncategorised
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Dips and bumps on the way (Week 5, Tuesday)
The David Nash at Kew exhibition has just closed, so sculptures and installations throughout the gardens are being dismantled, leaving behind rather large pits in the ground that need filling. So I am learning the art of filling holes, as part of our team days 🙂 The main issue with filling holes is to make…
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A typical day of maintenance (Week 4, Friday)
Today it has been a typical day of garden maintenance. For a start, we continued our collective effort to eradicate Smyrnium. The Smyrminators, we call ourselves nowadays, having spent almost every morning from 7.30 to 10 clearing the various areas of the gardens from this highly invasive weed, which tends to smother the lovely bluebells (themselves…
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Ashes to ashes (Week 4, Thursday)
Today we found some ashes scattered under a Pyrus while weeding. And then again under another tree. I knew that ash spreading was allowed at Kew because as soon as I started working here a friend suggested I go and visit her mum in the conservation area (which, unfortunately, I have not been able to do yet).…
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Two thirds of a day (Week 4, Wednesday)
This morning I woke up with a headache… so not a great start and one that would not put you in a good mood, then I went out and all was frosty, including the car windscreen: back to winter? Luckily, gardening usually alleviates all my ailments and annoyances, so I headed into work rather full…
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Cleaning up after the Romans (Week 4, Tuesday)
Since I moved to the UK I get that a lot: where are you from? Italy? Oh, the Romans were great… or something like that, for example: do you see that weed, Smyrnium, the Roman introduced it to England… ;p It would be fair to point out that not all Italians feel they are descendants…
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Kew Herbarium
“Herbaria are collections of dried preserved specimens that document the identity of plants and fungi. They represent reference collections with many and varied functions including identification, research and education”. (Royal Botanic Gardens Kew Herbarium Collections) Fascinating. Today we were taken on a tour of the herbarium by botanist David Goyder, who showed us some specimens and…
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Pruning (Week 3, Friday)
As a kid, I remember coming home from school and some plant or other in the garden that was lookin great in the morning would have been hacked horribly, its dignity lost, possibly at risk of never coming back. That would see me fuming with my father, the perpetrator. I knew nothing about plants back…
About Me
M.Paola Andreoni
I got the first allotment in 2007 (in the UK) and started growing my own food for the first time. Learning as I went along was not enough, so I studied some horticulture. I am striving to abide by organic principles. Brexit gave me a new life in the Netherlands, and two new plots by a nature reserve.
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