Herb Garden at Heathfield

Last year Friends of the Earth with help from Heathfield volunteers, planted flowers and herbs at the rockery to attract honey bees that are in considerable decline. The result as you can see is a fine spread of spring plants that are all hardy perennials.

Heathfield rockery

Heathfield also benefited from the ingenuity of one council employee who thought it would be a good idea to plant 20,000 crocuses on the vacant plot of land where stood Taberner House, the former council office hq in Central Croydon. He raised £5,000 through a crowd funding scheme online. The unique strain of crocus produced violet flowers in the autumn and was named the Croydon Saffron crocus.

The saffron flowered for two years before the Croydon site was redeveloped. 8,000 bulbs were donated to schools and community gardening groups including heathfield. This blog is being written in April so unfortunately no crocus flowers are available, but I will be sure to include some pictures in my autumn blog .

Meanwhile a plethora of daffodils adorn heathfield’s grounds.

worms eye view of daffs

 

Magnolias are in abundance at heathfield , these trees or shrubs have amazing  goblet- shaped flowers that appear in the spring. They command considerable space and are mainly half as wide as their height. The magnolia is one of the most ancient flowering tree and as it evolved before the bees it can only be pollinated by beetles.

Goblet flowers – perhaps Harry Potter’s favourite tree?

Rhododendrons have spectacular spring flowers and  have young leaves and stems covered in a striking dense woolly covering (indumentum) . They need an acid soil and have shallow roots. If you would like to plant one in your garden the roots should be placed just below the surface or the plant may die.

Camelia at heathfield