Turning tradition to good effect!

Tarvin Plant Sale 2023

A piece from Charles Bradley of the Tarvin Community Woodland Trust about gardening over the Easter weekend -- and being able to organise plants for the Woodland Plant Sale in May.

In my youth, it seemed that everyone in our neighbourhood was out in their gardens on Good Friday, because that was considered to be the day to plant your potatoes! Small seed potatoes had spent weeks sitting upon egg trays on sunny windowsills, developing short, strong shoots that were desperate to grow. Good Friday was thought of as being the point in the year when the greatest risk of deep frost had passed, and gardeners could be reasonably confident that the insulating properties of the soil would be sufficient to protect those small growths while they lengthened and worked their way to the surface.

These days, we may not all be quite so committed to planting potatoes on a particular day. However, the Easter weekend is still a popular time to get out into the garden. The first Bank Holiday of the year coincides with lengthening days, more warmth in the sunshine and the full benefits of Spring! What better time to get out and start to repair the ravages wreaked in your garden by the floods and storms of winter?

But while you're busily tidying up and making things smart once more, please spare a thought for the Tarvin Community Woodland Trust Plant Sale that is now only six weeks away. Many of the perennial plants that make your garden so beautiful in the summer grow into clumps, which will benefit from lifting and splitting, to rejuvenate their growth. You may not have room for two (or more) of the plants in your garden, but, if you were to put them into pots and let us have them to sell at the sale, then someone else will be able to get just as much enjoyment from them as have you. Still other plants may have seeded themselves across your garden. Potting some of these up would also be a good way to help the Trust to raise the funds that it needs to maintain Tarvin's lovely woodland! (We have lots of pots, should you need any!)

Tarvin Methodist Church will be open on Thursday 9th May for a "Plant Reception", to which everyone can bring their plants from 1.30pm onwards. That will give the woodlanders a chance to organise and price everything in good time before the Plant Sale, which is on Saturday, 11th May at 10am!

Such things as these do not involve you in spending cash and they require only a little effort – but, by doing it, you can make a huge difference. The success of our plant sale will depend on us having sufficient plants to sell and we welcome all plants that we can sell to raise money for the woodland!