Welcome Garden

Topping up the raised beds with compostCutting back the blackthorn hedge in the Welcome Garden

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Welcome Garden update March 2026

Summer 2025 was a challenge for all gardeners because of the hot, dry weather. Runner beans and squashes did not do as well as in previous years, especially because we only manage to water our vegetables twice weekly.

Nevertheless, we were able to share our potato harvest, onions and broad beans with our Friday Lunch Club and the Gloucester Windrush Meal Venture, who deliver a cooked meal to around 90 people every week. Runner beans really struggled in the heat but we shared the small harvest with the St Oswald’s Food Hub.

When autumn came, we sowed broad beans, swede and cabbages and planted onion sets which are slowly growing through the winter and will be ready to harvest in the late spring. We had already planted kale and Swiss chard and these can be harvested throughout the winter months.

In February we had a delivery of spent mushroom compost to top up the remaining empty beds (as shown in the picture). We are grateful to several of our Men's Social group who came along to help with the shovelling. It was a great relief to all that it wasn’t raining this time!

Over the winter (25/26) we have spent a few really wet or freezing Wednesday mornings in the Welcome Cafe planning what we are going to grow in 2026. We are not put off by gentle drizzle so, through the autumn and winter, have trimmed hedges around the church grounds and finished laying the hedge behind the kitchen. Laying a hedge reduces the height, making ongoing management much easier, and makes a better habitat for birds to nest. We were thrilled to find 2 nests in the section of the hedge that had been laid last winter. Having produced so much woody waste we have spent many hours chopping it up – by hand, with an electric shredder and a mower to fit it all in the the green waste bin. We are all looking forward to sowing and planting in the spring!

The snowdrops and daffodils we planted in the pollinator flower beds in the autumn of 2024 are appearing but there are many fewer than we remember planting. The dry summer will not have helped. We aim to plant more this year.

The greenhouse, that was so kindly donated to us, is still waiting to be glazed. Removing the old rubber sealing strip and fitting the new one has proved to be a very fiddly job – especially in cold weather! We are pleased to have several volunteers from the Men's Social group to help us when we start work on it again in the warmer weather.