Wildflower garden.

In July our herb group had a walk around the wildflower garden at St. Johns Mill where we have been asked to redesign the two herb areas. We were very lucky that Andree Dubbeldam who designed and planted the wildlife garden could spare the time to give our group a guided walk around it. There is an enormous range and diversity of plants there all beneficial to the wildlife. The garden also has a pond and is open to the public who want to spend some contemplative time there.

As well as designing the new herb area, our herb group are hoping to start a database of the plants in the garden which would include common names of the plant, uses past and present, beneficial aspects for wildlife and any medicinal or dye usages.
Here is a selection of some of the plants in the wildflower area.
Flowers and grasses to be found in the first bed nearest to the Mill are as follows;
Pendulous sedge, greater birdsfoot trefoil, yellow rattle, purple loosestrife and sneezewort.
The first plants to be found in the next bed are,
fleabane, melancholy thistle, dotted loosestrife, ragged robin, tufted hairgrass, ladyfern, native broom, rosemary, greater  woodrush, valerian, French cranesbill, square stalked St. John's wort, marjoram, common sorrel, greater willowherb, cotoneaster, cape figwort, herb robert, lady's bedstraw, mediterranean spurge, ornamental alliu, wood forget-me-not, woodruff, tormentil, knapweed, lemon balm, red campion, privet, grey willow, teasel, bell heather, goldenrod.

Our fragile craft art exhibition

I have been involved in an exhibition at St. John's Mill called Our Fragile Craft involving 12 artists using different media. These included, photography, acrylics, oil painting and textiles. I produced 3 new pieces of work for it , one of them called cooperation was a sunflower using golden rod dyed lambswool with couched leaves and a plant dyed bee. I have taken great delight this year in watching the vast number of bumble bees of all types in my garden.  Below is a photo of this work. Another plant design was a sowthistle which seeded itself outside my back door which I did sketches of and took photographs of to produce this hand stitched design on hand made paper. I will deal with the final piece of work in another blog as it is complex and experimental.

 I am really enjoying hand stitching again, my first love, and have recently joined the Hand Embroidery Network which is a group of like minded people who are inspirational and very gifted.
I am going on holiday for two weeks so will not be blogging for a while. I am going to Slovenia for a week to a hotel in a National park with a view outside the window of the Julian Alps where I hope to do lots of sketching and photography to get ideas for my next major exhibition based on biological forms. I am then spending 5 days in London with my son, and my daughter is joining us for 2 days. I have been reading On Growth and Form by D'Arcy Thompson and  the beautiful book, The Hidden Geometry of Flowers by Keith Critchlow and will be doing research in the Natural History Museum in London.

Magical Fantastical Exhibition

I have work hanging in two exhibitions at present, one of them is the Magical Fantastical exhibition held at the Hodgson Loom Gallery with the wonderful work of Julia Ashby Smyth on display. I have three pieces on show, one of them is called Yggdrasil, based on Norse Mythology, where a dragon lives below Asgard and chews the roots of the mighty ash tree. The base of the work is made from plant dyed wool and cashmere which has been hand stitched. A detail of the dragon is shown below; it is stitched in stem stitch using stranded cotton. Other features in this myth are deer, a squirrel, a snake, an eagle and holy wells which are shown in a larger view of my work.

Roses

Finally a new post after a very busy year in the garden. On the 12th June my U3A herb group met at Ballaghenny nature Reserve. Here we found a profusion of wild flowers but especially Burnet roses [rosa pimpinellifolia] of varying colours which spread by suckers to cover a wide area.   We studied various facts about roses and found several recipes using them. The rose is the national flower of the USA and the birth flower for June, in fact roses were Benjamin Disraeli's favourite flower.
Both the flowers and leaves of roses are edible, rose petals, once the bitter white portion is removed, along with lavender and violets add a sweet flavour to salads. Of course rose hips are widely used, those of rosa rugosa grow along one side of my pond. The outside flesh can be nibbled at as the hips are so large but be sure not to eat the internal irritant hairs. I also make rose hip syrup by adding two parts sugar or honey to the strained liquid of boiled hips. This keeps for a couple of weeks in the fridge. A tea can also be made from  the hips by pouring boiling water and letting them infuse for 10 minutes They are a wonderful source of vitamin C. Burnet Roses photographs from Ballaghenny are seen below.

Roses are also used in perfumery Attar of Roses is the essential oil extracted from various rose petals and rose water is a by product from the production of rose based perfumes.

Floral salad

This is the type of salad that I eat all year round, including many different leaves and flowers in season with only rarely a lettuce to be seen. This particular one has the following in it;
Japanese greens, American land cress, oregano, pot marjoram, curled mustard, salad burnet, fennel, red veined sorrel,nasturtium alaska leaves, sweet cicely, amaranth leaves, leaf beet and the following flowers;
Rampion, oregano and pot marjoram florets, nasturtium, mallow,  borage, evening primrose and meadow cranesbill.
As you can see it makes a wonderfully colourful palette especially when you include flowers of complementary colours. Some of the leaves are quite strong tasting on their own but when blended make a dish with subtle flavours. These are all growing in my garden and even when the snow is on the ground in the winter I can pick fresh salading. I also at various times of the year include what could be classed as weeds but to me they are a salad without any work attached. My garden is now at the stage where a large amount of self seeding occurs which also makes life easy.

Felted hanging

 Last Autumn my daughter and I went for a trip to the Curraghs Wildlife Park where we took a lot of photographs of the animals and birds. I was also struck by the wonderful colours of the foliage and trees and the quality of the late afternoon light. I particularly liked the image seen below on the left which I have subsequently used as the basis of a new felted hanging. I used several elements of the photograph which I particularly liked; the group of silver birch trees and the purple grey colour of the sky.
The majority of the work is made from plant dyed fibres including ivy and elderberry dyes as well as materials and snippets of fibre from my huge stash. I have incorporated both hand and machine stitches which allows me to introduce plenty of texture and subtle colours. The hanging is in an exhibition at present along with another work which is a framed piece with 4 miniature scenes done in machine stitch.
This hanging has now been sold.

Rushen Abbey

Our U3A herb group met at Rushen Abbey gardens, Ballasalla during May. We studied the plants which would be found in an Abbey garden. The plants were well labelled with information on their uses, some of the more unusual herbs planted there are the Gladdon Lily, Masterwort, Motherwort and Vervain. We then had a meeting in the Abbey restaurant where we had tea and cakes while discussing the history of herb gardens. We were fortunate to have access to a book in the i-museum Douglas which was written in 1919 by Eleanour Sinclair Rohde. It is called the History of herbs and has parts of it reproduced from a 1719 manuscript written by a butler. It was fascinating to discover the herbs used throughout the centuries and to learn that the use of vegetables in Britain, once common in Roman times, were not used by the majority of the population until early in the 19th century. Many flowers were used as herbs including roses, lilies, gillyflowers, periwinkle and peonies. Herbs were used in large quantities in Tudor times as stuffings and stewings for the huge quantities of meat that were eaten then.
The use of potatoes as a feed for the general population did not become common until 200 years after they were brought to England in Tudor times. Walter Raleigh's favourite cordial was strawberry wine.
Below is a photo of our U3A herb group and some of the plants in Rushen Abbey herb garden.