MEET OUR NEWMEMBERS

THE NEWSLETTER OF THE BATH ORGANIC GROUP SUMMER 2011www.bathorganicgroup.org.uk

Farmers’ Market, lots of great stuff from the garden, but get there early

Garden development Meeting at 11 a.m.

Harvest Feast, in the community garden bring food to share for lunch and cook things in the earth oven. 12.30 p,m onwards Garden Development Meeting at 11 a.m Apple Day at the Farmers’ Market

Garden Development Meeting at 11 a.m.

Farmers’ Market Annual meeting at St. Marks Community Centre Wid-combe BA2 4PA at 2 p.m. Bring and share lunch at 1p.m. with a fund raising auction after the AGM. Please bring your contributions

Garden Development Meeting at 11 a.m Christmas Farmers’ Market

September 3

September 6

September 11

October 8

October 15

November 1

November 5

November 26

December 3

December 17

FORTHCOMING EVENTS & BOG CONTACTS

The website and the email newsletter from Peter Andrews will keep you up to date on any additional events www.bathorganicgroup.org.uk

in this issue

Chickens are here — and laying

Earth oven is built —come cook on it

How to brew your own — and grow it first

Disharmony in the veg patch — whose fault?and lots more including • Kate Middleton declared Queen • Transition explained • Bridgette’s departure • Free slug nematodes • Flying snails .... um, that’s about it

Kate Mills (Chair)311699katemillsbath@gmail.comDanny Smith (Treasurer)dantherandom@hotmail.comTim Baines (garden and trading hut)312116timjbaines@yahoo.co.ukGemma Bolton (co-ordinators)gembolton@ymail.comPauline Magrath (trading hut)shirleymagrath@yahoo.co.ukSheila Blethyn (farmers’ market)866150sheilablethyn@yahoo.co.ukRia Gane (chickens)ria_gane@yahoo.co.uk Peter Andrews (communications)484472zen20627@zen.co.ukGeoff Andrews (newsletter)484422g.andrews@mac.com

in this issueThree cheers for us

Well we did it!We have had the Official Confirmation from The Big Lottery Fund that they have ac-cepted our final report and accounts for the completion of the 20th Birthday Bonanza. Congratulations to everyone for enthusiasm, hardwork and persistence in the face of some fearsome weather. The earthoven has been christened and will be in action again at the Harvest Feast, so come along and sample some delicious hot

home-made pizza, soup, tikka — or any other exotic food you would like to cook.The bantams are snuggly and safely housed and laying delicate pale eggs heralded by loud exclamations (from them not us ).The garden is yielding the fruits of our la-bours so come along and share the bounty.

Autumnally KateChair

On June 6 ten special ladies arrived at the BOG garden and have been there ever since That’s right, our delightful bantam chickens have arrived.

It was rather a nervous start for all: would the chick-ens approve of their new home? Would there actually be anyone to look after them? Well rest assured, the rota was drawn and BOG now has its own Chicken Club, with members visiting morn-ing and night to provide food, water and some bedtime ushering.

The residents fast established their pecking order - quite literally, as a few bare-bummed ladies can vouch. Ria Gane, Head of the Chicken Coopers, was quick to their rescue with some purple spray that not only provides some antiseptic soothing, but also names and shames the ‘peckers’ with their rather colourful beaks! Reassuringly, this not so lady-like behaviour should reduce in time as the chickens relax into their new routine.

The girls certainly seem to approve of their sur-roundings, and have developed a real penchant for their evening corn, which can also be used to lure any of the cheekier chickens to bed at the end of the day!

Over the last couple of Saturdays some tentative steps have been taken, as the bantams have been allowed to roam outside of their run. As their confidence continues to grow, you might find them wandering further into the garden.

Some six weeks after their arrival and an early bloomer has been supplying treats in the form of a tiny egg laid once every other day.

Each Chicken Club member receives the day’s bounty as a thanks for their care and attention, but

the first egg deservedly went to Bill Brown, who made it possible for BOG to have these wonderful residents. (A huge thank you to Bill!)

We hope that you will each visit the garden to be entertained by our marvellous new friends. If you would like to make yourself available for oc-casional holiday cover, or join the rota as a full chicken cooper, please contact Ria Gane: ria_gane@yahoo.co.uk

/Gemma Bolton

Dan Bolton with the very first egg from the bantams

The chickens came first

then the eggs

Because of lottery funded renovations on the garden we were not been able to have school visits till June. So the first visitors were 24

five- year-olds from St. Andrew’s Primary, a rather overawed little group. We did tours of the flower and

vegetable gardens and then went into the chicken run. At first the chickens were quite

wary but by the time the fourth group arrived were happily accepting grain pitched towards them.The act+ivities included planting beans with Pauline, decorating sunhats (modelled by all) with Gill, turning compost with Tim and Ria, and identifying butterflies with Bridgette and Simi. Pauline provided blackberries

from her allotment and all went back to school happily clutching bunches of flowers.In July we welcomed the second

St Andrews group. I had assumed them to be seven year olds but they turned out to be only six, a very excitable bunch. Passing the tea table one lad

asked me When do we get the food? A similar range of walks and

chicken visits was followed by drinks and biscuits. As it was a very hot day I offered a second drink. Big mistake! The queue for the compost loo was long so we did several verses of “heads shoulders, knees and toes” to Bill’s complete mystification This time the activities included minibeasts with Pauline, counting compost worms with

Ria, identifying and smelling herbs with Kate and a quiz with Bridgette.Not only did she have to read

out the questions but spell the answers as well. When Kate asked who was our present Queen a chorus came Kate Middleton !Biggest hit were the chickens

who thoughtfully had laid our first two tiny eggs.

If you are free on a Thursday and would like to help with school visits in the Autumn term please email Sheila at: sheilablethyn@yahoo.co.uk. No CRB check or dumb bureaucracy necessary.

Chickens lay on surprise for visitorsWork in progress: the pond-dipping jetty under construction

Grow your own pint

This is a brief introduction to growing and brewing beer for a really local pint.1) Grow some barley (two row barley is best but six row will still work fine)* - sow mid-March to mid-April in closely spaced rows (about 10 cm apart)- watch it grow and enjoy watching the wind ripple across it- harvest when seeds dry (July onwards)- save straw for keeping your pond clear- separate seed from chaff by rubbing between slip-pered feet and rubber car mat (doesn’t matter about leaving the husk on the grain)- remember to save seed for growing next year2) Gather and dry hops- you can grow dwarf (9 ft tall!) hops up bean poles (or trees)- keep an eye out in hedgerows for wild hops- pick when ‘cones’ are starting to dry out i.e. still green but going brown at edges- dry thoroughly - use about 2.5g of dried hops per pint of beer3) Make malt- soak barley grain in water for 24 hours- drain and spread in a 2-5cm layer in a waterproof container (brewing bin works fine)- stir twice a day

- sugar conversion complete when acrospire (the shoot NOT the roots) is between 3/4 and the full length of the grain (this is difficult to see as it’s in-side the husk so peel a few grains)- dry malt thoroughly- to make darker malt surface dry the grains then dry roast gently (approx 160º C), checking frequently and stirring until the desired colour is obtained (don’t worry if some parts burn - this will add to the flavour) - do not use lots in grist as sugar extraction will suffer (max 1/4 of chocolate coloured malt)- (can buy ready malted grain from home brew shops)4) Make Wort- coarsely grind malt to ‘grist’- steep in water about 68 degrees C for 90 mins (i.e. boil water, leave to cool to about 72 then add malt) - stir occasionally - drain off liquor and reserve - ‘sparge’ grain twice - pour warm water through grist to extract more sugars, collect the water with the first run-off)- test the sugar content of the wort (malty water) with a saccharometer/hydrometer and adjust volume to give right level of sugar (depends how strong you want the beer - boil off water to make stronger, dilute to make weaker)- spent grain should be high in fibre and protein and can be used as animal feed (if the husks were left

Never one to take the easi-est option, Danny Smith grows his own beer. Here is his step-by-step guide to becoming a fundamen-

talist organic brewer

on in 1 it’s a bit fibrous for human consumption but makes an interesting porridge)- (you can buy malt extract from home brew shops or health food shops) 5) Make beer- take wort and bring to boil with some hops (lots for bitter, less for mild) and boil for 90 mins- add another handful of hops 5 mins before end of boil to add ‘top notes’- from this point on strict hygiene must be observed (i.e. sterilise all equipment used, keep wort covered to stop insects/dust/nasties getting in)- strain out hops- put liquor in primary fermentation vessel (brewing bucket)- cool liquor to blood temperature- add yeast and cover vessel (good beer yeast makes a real difference to how well the end product clears - you can use bakers’ yeast at a push)- leave for five days to ferment (check a ‘head’ forms on the liquor to show the yeast is working)- bottle in sterilised and rinsed bottles (beer bottles look good but big plastic pop bottles are easier to clean and cap (with a small amount of sugar (1/2 tsp per pint) added to give fizz- leave for at least 2 weeks to complete fermentationDrink with a sigh of relief.

I managed 10 pints of beer (and minor scolding) from approx 1.2 x 1.2 metre patch of barley, at about 100 grams of barley per pint. It’s not bad stuff (very dark colour due to some very caramelised malt) but very palatable.Even if you’re brew isn’t fantastic it’ll make you appreciate the professionally made stuff!• Hops aren’t the only flavouring, heather is tradi-

tional and any bitter herb should do the job (e.g. sage).

• Garlic beer is worth a try if you have vampire trouble

• Fruit pulp in a muslin bag lobbed in during fer-mentation can make a wonderful smelling beer with a touch of colour (need approx 50g per pint to get aroma, more for a good taste)

• Ginger can be added for a fresh kick or li-quorice root added to the boil for lingering sweetness.

• The internet is a great resource for interesting recipes or go down to Widcombe Home Brew Centre and have a chat with the proprietor (other home brew shops are available - Keyn-sham has a well stocked one).

* Two row and six row refer to the way the grains appear on the barley, not the way it’s grown. Dan’s grew six-row this year.

Bridgette Sibbick has been a stalwart mem-ber of BOG for so many years that their move to the Isle of Wight in July will be felt by many.

Bridgette supported the Farmers’ Market from the start, puttering into the car park in her scarlet and yellow 2CV to do her stint on the stall .

That unmistakeable car did great service over the years, even on one occasion being loaded with so many sacks of well-rotted horse manure in the boot that the front wheels were almost off the ground until Bridgette and John got in, for the scary 10-mile drive home, though they seemed blissfully unaware of the risk.

On the Island they will be living within a few minutes of the beautiful Ventnor Botanical Gardens, where a thriving volunteer force will no doubt embrace their enthusiasm and knowledge.

A wedge of long-standing Boggers were at Bridgette and John’s home in Bear Flat for a farewell party and lots of cake, just days before they were moving, but neither seemed at all stressed, either by the move, or the crowds of people that kept arriving.

No doubt everything went into the 2CV.We sincerely hope we will see them in Bath

again soon, but in the meantime wish them every good fortune in their new home.

Bridgette and John Sibbickhave left the garden

The first pizza came out of the new earth oven at about one o’clock on Spring Bank Holiday, a hot, tasty, bit of wonder on a bleak and drizzly day. Barely a minute earlier it had been a few lumps of cheese, some tomato paste and a piece of bread dough, but with an operating temperature inside that oven of about 700ºC you can bake a pizza almost as fast as you can get it in and out again.That pizza was not the beginning of the story, more like the end for the team who had built it over the previous few weeks of concentrated Saturday work-ing.Or much longer if you take into account the work to dig out the clay from the bottom of the new pond which was reused in creating the oven.The visible work started with the solid earth base so that the oven could be used at a normal waist-high position. Next, a layer of bricks was carefully placed across the top of the base to form the cooking base of the oven. A great pile of damp sand, specially chosen because of its ability to bind together was then built up to create a former in the eventual shape of the inside of the oven. This was then covered with newspaper and tied to keep it in place.The next stage involved lots of squidging and tramp-ing barefoot in sand, clay and chopped straw to make the cob or pisé mixture still used in large parts of Africa for bricks and ovens like this.This mud pie was formed into sausage shape wet bricks which were placed to encircle and cover the sand former, followed by a second layer, much like the first, to give a thickness to the oven and retain its heat.The doorway was made (ensuring that it was wide enough to get in the dishes and utensils we would be using).A final smooth skin of the same mud, sand and straw, though this time chopped really fine, was plastered over the outside to give a smooth finish and with the sand former removed, the oven was almost ready to go, apart from a further week of drying out.A test firing helped the drying process without rais-ing the temperature too high, and then, on Growing Green Day, dry wood was piled in, the fire lit and,

The one minute pizza that tookweeks to make

after a couple of hours of heating and stoking with more wood, the first of many pizzas made that day was fed into the oven by Danny, who had been a constant worker on all stages of the job, and the expert oven builder Liz Clark, the brains behind the operation.Fortunately, given the weather that day, they had both put in some extra hours the week before creat-ing a roof over the oven.The earth oven is going to be a fantastic asset to the garden in so many ways. It can be educational, for school visits.

It can be fun for all of us members, especially if we want to have a winter event, where we can all keep warm and have hot food without going home smelling like kippers after standing round a bonfire.

And it can’t be stolen.Perhaps the strangest (and most reassuring) thing about the new oven is that when the temperature inside is so high, the outside is still only just about lukewarm.• There is no photographs of the pizzas because

we were too busy eating them.

I often like to play this game even though it frightens me witless: I sit quietly with a cup of tea and a piece of cake and cast my mind forward 25 years. What will be the factors that will be shaping the society in which I live? Perhaps you might to like play…… are you sitting

comfortably? Is the tea the right temperature, your cake moist and chocolaty? Good. Now, bearing in mind that a good cake is full of teeth rotting stuff, think about your dentist. What would it be like

visiting a dentist who didn’t have access to all sorts of technological wizardry and the power to run it all? Interesting eh, the era of cheap unlimited power, fuelled by oil and coal, is nearly over. Or ponder your tea and that

delicious chocolate cake. What happens if climate change has ruined the cocoa harvest and the tea bushes have all died out from drought?There are a million ‘what

ifs’. Everywhere you look, the things around you, have been manufactured or arrived on your doorstep courtesy of cheap oil. The Transition movement

is interested in all of them and Transition Bath is very interested in the ones that will affect us here in Bath. Times are changing rapidly and at Transition Bath we have decided that rather

than wait for ‘them’ to sort it out we will take matters into our own hands. We will work with those who are heading our way and try and convert those who aren’t.Even the most rabid – Lib

Con Lab supporter would admit that government attempts to halt climate change, to move to a green economy, to cut down waste, to reign in the power of the multinationals, encourage local democracy and a myriad of things that all of us sensible organic gardeners know should be done, have been woeful, vastly beyond woeful, complete and utter pants. So that means it is down to

us, you and me, to start to organise things the way we think would make us most resilient to change. We need to look at energy:

how to use less and generate the rest cleanly. We need to look at food: how will we get enough to eat, where will it come from and who will grow it. We need to look at

our communities: how will we stop the richest and most powerful from just grabbing everything. We need to look at dentists and hospitals, the clothes and shoes, how we get about, how to cope with floods and weird weather, democracy and governance, so, so many things and so little time. So you can see the

Transition movement is a broad church with room for all who want to address the twin questions of climate change and peak oil. You don’t have to wear a

hair shirt, eat only boiled potatoes and sit in the dark. You just need to realise that ‘business as usual’ is not an option if we want a sane and inhabitable society for our children and our children’s children.Transition Bath has a fine

website - www.transitionbath.org - and runs all sorts of events you can go to and join in with – all aimed at making Bath a more resilient city, one better able to deal with the coming changes.

The journey will be a long one and difficult choices will have to be made. But we have to start somewhere and we have to start now.

As that famous Bath resident Mao Zedong said – a journey of a 1000 miles starts with a single step, a nice cup of tea and piece of gooey chocolate cake.

Onward.

/Peter Andrews

An introduction to the Transition movement?

Another growing season, another foolproof way to deal with slugs. Unfor-tunately the slugs don’t know the meth-ods are foolproof so they make fools of us yet again.But this time...One proved and organic method has been the nematode route, watering on a solution bought at no little expense from Nemaslug or some-thing similar that parasitises the slugs and can clear the soil if used succession-ally. But at no little cost.Nemaslug costs about £9 to treat a 50 sq m plot and you have to repeat that every six weeks.The new, grow-your-own nematode pro-duces that same mix, ready to water onto your soil, free. Well that’s the theory. My first experiment was a failure - but that’s probably my fault.The grow your own system comes with the backing of Helen Yemm, who writes a column in the Daily Telegraph but is oth-erwise a very sound person.

STEP 3

STEP 4

AND WHAT PRECISELY IS A NEMATODE?

STEP 1

STEP 2

Some of the slugs in your garden will carry bacterial disease or already be infected by nematodes, but because they are low density it won’t affect the population of slugs (see also the piece on harlequin ladybirds).If you can concentrate those nematodes and then return them to the soil you have a natural predator.

Collect as many slugs as you can find. After dark is the best time because they are out in the open, especially after or during rainfall. Alternatively lay a sheet of cardboard and collect them daily. Half shells of grapefruit, pith side down, also prove very attractive. Keep them in a jamjar with a few holes in the lid, and with some greenery for them to eat.

Collect at least 10 slugs but the more the merrier, and then transfer them to a bucket , with an inch or two of water at the bottom (for humidity, and some more greenery which will float in the water.Cover the bucket with a slab or some cover that will ensure they cannot escape.The bacteria and nematodes will breed freely in this atmosphere in the water. Stir the mix daily, but be careful not to drown the slugs. .

After a fortnight the water will have a nematodes and the slugs will have died from infection. Dilute the mixture in the bucket by filling it to the brim, then decant it into a watering can, straining the mixture through a sieve, or just a screw of chicken wire, so that the detritus of the weeds and dead slug doesn’t go into the can.

Water the sieved solution around your plot.The increased nematode population will continue to breed for a time while it can find suitable host slugs to live on. After six weeks the effects will have worn off and another treatment will be necessary, but rather than start the whole process you can use the grue-some mixture that was strained out of the first brew to start a second batch of nematodes, apparently.

A free biological solution for all your slug problems

Nematodes are the most numerous multicellular animals on earth. A handful of soil will contain thousands of the microscopic worms, many of them parasites of insects, plants or animals. There are nearly 20,000 described species. Nematodes are structur-ally simple organisms, characterized as a tube within a tube because the alimentary canal extends from the mouth to the anus. In size they range from 0.3 mm to over 8 metres.

Snails can travel a mile a night. That statement was made without any backing information, in an article by Alys Fowler (late of Gar-dener’s World on BBC) in the Guardian’s weekend magazine.If you reckon the average

snail night as something like 10 hours that means travelling at about nine feet a minute non-stop in a dead straight line. Possible? With-out a tea break; without suc-cumbing to the attractions of someone’s carefully tended row of carrots; without dry-ing out?The evidence on snail travel

is all a bit sketchy. Mostly it is concerned with this idea that you can get over a snail prob-lem by taking them somewhere else and releasing them rather than destroying them. Throwing them into next door’s garden is obviously not much use unless you think that snails know the meaning of fences and walls or can read your title deeds.But it was the idea of the remote

release that trapped Alys into her wonderland of high speed snails.All the evidence shows that the

only way a snail could get from a release point a mile from your garden quickly is to be small enough to be swallowed whole by a bird and delivered via the other end back on your plot, which sounds unlikely, but apparently some snails do survive being eaten. On the Japanese island of Ha-

hajima little green birds called white-eyes live on tiny land snails.

About one in eight of the snails eaten survived digestion and were found alive in the birds’ drop-pings. With that success rate and the state they were in after, they probably felt as if they had flown Ryanair.But without a white-eye the

speeds they can clock vary signifi-cantly. Archie, a snail ’owned’ by

Carl Branhorn of Pott Row, near King’s Lynn, holds the Guinness World Record at 13 inches in 2 minutes, won at the 1995 World Snail Racing Championships, but like the World Baseball Series in the US, this event may not have had many international entrants. That is about 30 feet an hour, so if Archie could keep his mojo going round the clock for nine days he’d

complete the mile.That was significantly

slower than the unofficial time clocked by a snail trained by Chris Hudson of Brighton, who claimed in 1975 that his champion had covered ‘the standard course’ of two feet in three minutes flat, which could have worked out at a mile in about five days. And now snails are get-

ting even slower. Last year an attempt on the record at Congham in Norfolk failed dismally. As compensa-tion Claire Lawrence won a silver tankard filled with lettuce when her snail cov-ered the 13 inch course in three minutes 41 seconds.

Recently Ruth Brooks, from Totnes won a BBC competition with an experiment to find out how strong the homing instinct was in snails. It seemed to exist for distances up to 10 metres, but beyond that, conclusions are dif-ficult because a lot of the snails in the experiment seem to have met with a sticky end anyway. She concluded: ‘implications for

frustrated gardeners, who want to know exactly how far away they can dump their garden snails, are that, on the evidence so far, it would be safe to take and place them elsewhere at a distance of, say, 100 to 200 metres. There-fore, there is no need to kill them.’ She might have added that even

a world champion would take 24 hours of power slithering to get back, and that an awful lot can happen in 200 metres. /GA

Some of the snails that sur-vived being eaten by birds

So what is a snail’s pace?All the information in this piece came from the internet — it’s that reliable

Have you seen Harmonia axyridis yet? Probably. The more common name is the harlequin ladybird, and if you haven’t, you soon will.An Asian invader, it was first recorded

in Britain in 2004 and can now be found almost everywhere, and certainly throughout the Bath area.Biologist Ken Thompson did some

detective work for a piece about the beasts, to find out how they came here and why they are so successful.Although the harlequin is native to

Asia, it came here from the United States, where it was introduced as a biological control agent for a range of insect pests almost a century ago. That failed.There were attempts to introduce it to

Europe in 1982, and to South America in 1986; but they failed as well, Then, in 1988, a thriving population

was discovered in Louisiana, from where it quickly spread to the rest of the US and soon most of the rest of the world too. US harlequins turned up in Europe and South America in 2001, South Africa in 2004. Now it’s the most widespread ladybird in North America and looks set to become Britain’s commonest ladybird, if it isn’t already.Clearly something happened to the

harlequin in the south-eastern US. Introduced populations always start

small, so there is inbreeding, which brings together recessive mutations causing malformation, disease and death. These mutations exist in large

populations but do not threaten them. But small populations might go

through a process called purging, in which the harmful mutations that make inbreeding so dangerous are lost completely. Any population that successfully

negotiates this process emerges not only immune to the detrimental effects of inbreeding, but fitter, faster and better all around.But because the conditions under

which it’s supposed to occur are so restrictive, purging remained merely a theoretical curiosity – until now.Biologists found the Louisiana

harlequins were successfully purged of their bad mutations and now grow faster and have more offspring than native Asian harlequins. They’re also completely immune to

inbreeding and could even oust the original strain in Asia.In Britain the harlequin is going to take over whether we like it or not, so resist the temptation to interfere; you may kill native ladybirds by mistake, and nothing you do can possibly have any effect on its numbers.

Harmonia rules, so don’t fight itHow a newcomer to your garden became invincible

— and guess who made it happen

John Brooke’s annual sale at the Old Brewery in South Stoke hit one of the few sunny days at that dreary time at the beginning of June, which brought out the crowds and resulted in good business for the BOG stall. So much so that although there was a convoy of cars taking stuff up beforehand only two of the four cars on standby to return

unsold goods to the garden at the end of the day were needed, and most of their space was taken up with the trays and other clobber that are used to display and transport the plants.It was much more of a success than Growing Green shortly before, which was blighted by one of those dripping, drizzly cold days that has happened all too often this year

year. As a result we had very few visitors. If the Bath Flower Show is reborn next year we will have to rethink the event.Thanks to everyone who helped raise the plants in the garden or donated plants they had raised at home. If you can raise plants for sale next year feel free to take from the pot mountain beyond the earth oven.

One good event, and one not so good

You probably haven’t noticed, but as well as being the international year of forests and chemistry, 2011 is also the international year of volunteering, which is one reason why it was the subject of a conference at Bath University for three days in July.Plant Network, the professional organisation

for people who run public gardens, parks, arboretums and the like, was discussing garden volunteers, and I was there because of my involvement in the Friends of Bath Botanical Gardens, and our intention to encourage more volunteeringSome of the lessons could be applicable to

many of the things we are doing and want to do in the community garden.It is impossible to summarise the (often

technical) proceedings of three days of presentations and discussion here, and much of it is not relevant to our purpose, but some of the facts that emerged are fascinating.Kew Gardens, for instance, has more than

600 volunteers (and a waiting list of 300) who produce £7 worth of benefit for every £1 spent on managing them. They do 86,000 hours work a year, which is valued at £33 million, more than the income of all Kew’s retail operations.In Philadelphia they applied science to

something we all know, that parks, open spaces and places like our garden are beneficial to the whole community.But the findings showed much more. For every

dollar invested in public parks and open spaces the city got a return of $100. They also found that more than 90 per cent of the population used parks in any year, significantly more than visited museums and libraries. /GA

It’s our year, so keep volunteering

Cake and garden volunteers are closely related, but apparently at one National Trust venue there was a very sedate near-riot (i.e. voices were raised) when volunteers discovered they were being given the previous day’s unsold cakes during their break.

The NT solution? No more free cake, fresh or stale for any of them. Seems it was accepted by most of the gardeners.

Let them eat cake? No!

Don’t miss out on our

HarvestFeast

September 11 from 12.30

Bring food to share, and if you are adventurous,

to cook in the earth oven(with expert guidance)

It will be sunny because the school holidays will have ended

Kew Garden’s 600 volunteers tend to be younger than many of our own