This March...

March has definitely brought with it hints, and sometimes real glimpses, of spring, including for me some random bulb discoveries around my garden. I found three pale daffodils growing up through the wallflowers, and have enjoyed watching them and the other daffodils flower. Then last week, during my first gardening stint of the year, I noticed a bluebell growing in my pot of rhubarb. It’s entirely possible that this one has long been there, and just hasn’t flowered before - though it looks a little different to the bluebells we had in our London garden.

Either way though, the random bulbs have made me smile. In fact I’ve decided I need more spring bulbs, so will attempt to remember this in the autumn when the daffodil bulbs go on sale - and I may also remember to plant them in time too, if I’m lucky.

The garden’s waking up and much more traffic

In a matter of days the small crab apple tree has gone from twigs to almost having leaves, and I know how it feels as my own wardrobe has changed, well mostly. I’ve definitely worn my jeans less especially towards the end of the month, and I’ve reminded myself I have a whole wardrobe of clothes at my fingertips to wear, rather than just look at.

March has also been a momentous month in that MOH and I made it along to our first village Parish Council meeting, which actually takes place in the next village as we don’t have a village hall, or a pub for that matter. I’m not sure why it’s taken us quite so long to make it along, and we were warmly welcomed to the just over an hour meeting.

A lot of the meeting was taken up by discussing the recently started roadworks on the nearby A46 which are scheduled to last for eighteen months, and have brought increased traffic at more often than not above the 30mph speed limit. The councillors were sympathetic and clearly frustrated as villagers (ours and other small villages) by the increased ‘rat-running’ and have organised additional speed limit reminder signs, as they promised. Of course, they’ve not really made a difference and my view is because the signs are designed to be read by pedestrians, but are really aimed at motorists driving past above the speed limit, so they’re as good as useless as there’s too much information for drivers (or any speed) to read. But at least it’s the first step that needs to be taken in the slow turning wheels of district and county council processes.

Wine, lights and art

Around the house we’ve sorted out some more effective wine storage with a new 42 space wine rack which matches a smaller one we have, and means we have plenty of space and can get rid of various cardboard boxes MOH has been storing under the stairs. It may or may not be our longer term storage solution, but it’s certainly tidied an area that needed it.

I’m also waiting on a new light for the landing, or gallery as we call it - our kitchen has a part-double height space and so the light upstairs lights both spaces each evening, especially good for when you want some light but don’t want to put the big light on. The silver light that we previously had in our conservatory decided it would work no more, and for no obvious reason. We’d had it a while and had had good use out of it, and while it’s sad to see it go (or it will be when we take it to the tip) it’s also been fun trying to source a replacement that was similar but not quite the same. One arrived last week, but the metal base was chipped and so that’s gone back and I’m waiting for its replacement - hopefully that one will have a smoother journey.

With the weather being much nicer we’ve also ventured out more, heading out to Nottingham by bus for lunch and some small errands. We planned to do some light research for a replacement kitchen sofa - the grey one photographed above is actually a garden sofa, which may finally make its debut in the actual garden. But we didn’t get as far as the sofa shop we planned to, we got as close as next door and had an on the whim visit to the art gallery next door after we saw a painting in the window from an artist we’re keen on.

We didn’t make it to the sofa shop as we ended up buying some artwork for the landing on the stairs. It’s a big space that needs something with impact, and ours is on order. It wasn’t our intention to buy this now, but when you see it and know its right, there’s no point in waiting is there?

There were some very lovely pieces in there with lots of zeroes on the end of the price tag, it isn’t one of those (sadly!) but we were given the full VIP treatment with a tea/coffee while we made our mind up and a glass of bubbly once the deal was sealed. So that should be with us next month - and at some point we’ll restart the informal sofa research too, but not just yet.

A bull and the Burrand stone

We’ve explored different river paths of the Trent in Newark starting from of all places Waitrose car park, but finding paths that cross the river making it easier to reach some of the retail parks on foot, which could be handy at times. The path went further than this, but given the sign and the fact we still had some shopping to do, here seemed as good as place to stop as any.

We joined a guided walking tour of the East Stoke Battle Fields organised and led by the parish church in Newark. It was great to hear more of the history of the area around our village, which is where the last battle of the War of the Roses took place, and to see the memorial stone which is on private property. I’ll share more about our walk later in the week, but in the meantime here’s a peek at the Burrand stone.

And of course we also had our first visit of the year to the Belton Estate, where we finally managed to revisit the conservatory, as well as seeing more of the house than ever before along with the new crafting a new narrative exhibition, but that’s not all. While in Nottingham, and before buying artwork and recovering with a pizza in Rudy’s, we popped along to the Transition & Decay exhibition in another new-to-us venue, the Nottingham Society of Artists Gallery.

TAKE HEED BY GILLI THEOKRITOFF

I’d picked up the flyer at the Newark Quilt Show earlier in the year, and we planned our trip to Nottingham to coincide with the exhibition. The piece I’ve shared above is one of the most thought provoking pieces we saw, and was MOH’s favourite - I even caught him taking some pictures of his own. It turns out this piece is by one of the tutors from the Floral Fancy workshop I attended in January, it’s a relatively small world it would seem. I’ve plenty more pictures to share from the exhibition so look out for those.

And before I go there’s a wedding in the offing for 2026 with my youngest niece and her fiancé sending out their ‘save the date’ details. You can’t beat a wedding, can you?

If you want to read my previous monthly updates in my ‘This is’ series you’re very welcome.

Make a Metre Matter with Gardeners' World

* I was invited to the Garden Press Event, a one day show which connects garden product suppliers with garden media, I’ve also worked with the team at Gardeners’ World Live so I’m marking my blog posts from the event as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

Gardeners’ World is a bit of a national treasure isn’t it, or I think so at least. You’ll know that I love my visits to the the Live show at the NEC and I also love to catch up with Monty and the team when they’re back on our TV screens too. This year they have a campaign to Make a Metre Matter encouraging everyone to transform a metre of outdoor space for the good of the planet.

Whether you have an urban courtyard, small balcony, country plot or a community space, each of us making the most of one dedicated metre will have a real impact, and when you think about it a metre isn’t very much, but it can make an awful lot of difference.

As you’d expect every part of the Gardeners’ World brand will focus on their annual campaign - the magazine, the TV show, the digital platforms and live events, with Nick Bailey creating this year’s headline Show Garden at Gardeners’ World Live - but more on that later.

How you can Make a Metre Matter

There are loads of ways you can make a meaningful difference, whether that’s growing plants for caterpillars and pollinators, growing salad or vegetables to cut down a little on food miles and get a tastier crop at the same time, or creating a compost heap to boost your soil and help biodiversity.

The team at Gardeners’ World have plenty of ideas to inspire us which you’ll see more of in the coming months including how to:

• grow yourself a pollinator patch to support bees, butterflies, caterpillars and more,

• grow and harvest a summer of tasty veg using your square metre of space,

• boost biodiversity and welcome wildlife by making a small pond to make a big difference,

• save money on salad growing your own from seed,

• create an insect haven with log piles, habitat stacks and more,

• to get composting and boost your soil’s health with homemade compost.

Which all sounds quite tiring, but you don’t need to do it all! But there is a chance to win prizes when you register (before 30 September 2025) your participation at https://www.gardenersworld.com/win/make-a-metre-matter/

I’ve been considering what I could do in my garden, and while I do need a compost bin, that’s not what I’m going for as until I know more about what we’re doing with our garden I’m not sure where to put it. I do want to up my game on salad this year as we eat so much of it, and I’m always buying it. I like to have a variety of leaves and can quite often get bored with a single variety of lettuce, but then when I buy more than one it seems a rush to eat it - I can’t win! But if I were to grow more of my own then I could quite literally have my pick whenever I wanted, so I think that’s the right thing for me - though as before where to do this is an issue, so I think my metre will be across a number of pots, which may not be in keeping with the ethos of the campaign, but it’s what I can do and it’s way better than nothing.

Nick Bailey’s Gardeners’s World Live headline show garden, The Plant Based Garden

I mentioned earlier in this post that Nick Bailey is creating this year’s headline show garden and it’s going to be packed with ideas for transforming a metre of space, with ways to support wildlife, recycle and inspiration for choosing materials carefully as well as growing planet friendly plants.

Nick’s been involved with the campaign from the off and his garden with bring the Make a Metre Matter campaign to life. He’ll be including lots of interesting elements to the garden and wants to prove it possible to create a whole garden with only renewable resources. After the show in Birmingham the garden will move about 30 miles up the road to two different charities which are both focused on horticultural education. They are the University of Leicester Botanic Garden which is currently undergoing renovation so the show garden will add to their planting and resources, and the YMCA Leicestershire who have a big project engaging young people in horticultural careers.

And of course there’ll be lots of one square metre inspiration within the show garden, Nick said that the garden looks like a big Tetris game, but of course that it also has a cohesive design - and personally I can’t wait to see it first hand.

But until then I’ve my salad seeds to sort through and get planting - all the time remembering not to plant too many at once!

Bringing the bling to Zumba

I haven’t shared any pouches for a while, but don’t worry they’re still around - and the pouch love wait is over! Though today’s pouch is one that I’ve embellished rather than made myself.

At the start of 2024 one of our neighbours started a Zumba class in the next village, and so I’ve found myself heading along most Thursdays never having zumba-ed before - and quite honestly, I’m still not sure I’m technically doing it right, but it’s good fun and it’s a great group of people.

At Christmas our Zumba-leading neighbour held a fuddle for the group to celebrate our first year, which was a really thoughtful thing to do, and I think has helped cement the relationships that were already forming. We all insisted on helping cater the evening, as you would, and for a while our Zumba chat was the list of who was bringing what - and most importantly not to forget your slippers on the actual evening.

Now that’s my type of party!

Or fuddle. Not even knowing what a fuddle was, I’ve now been to two as my Sewing Group had one too. It’s a term I’d not come across before, and if you haven’t either, this is Wikipedia’s definition:

(UK, dialect, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Bedfordshire) A party or picnic where attendees bring food and wine; a kind of potluck.

But anyway, at the fuddle we all left with a Zumba pouch - imagine my joy, wearing slippers to a party and bringing a pouch home!

Embellishing my Zumba pouch

Obviously with twenty or so of these pouches now in the wild in my local area there was a high chance that some would make it to a Zumba class near me every week, and with them all looking the same that might not be the best move. So I decided some kind of customisation was required - and while I could have simply written my name inside, I decided to go bigger than that.

I also wanted to cover some of the text as that wasn’t for me. I know it’s fairly inoffensive, and more descriptive but I knew I’d be happier with just having the Zumba on my pouch - I can’t explain why. And I knew I had some sequins hanging around, like you do - and so I thought I’d put the mismatch of those together in ‘disco-type bands’ above and below the main zumba-ing figures.

This gave me the opportunity to test out my sequin applying skills, as well as my ability to thread teeny tiny needles - small enough to go through those tiny beads!

And actually it was quite a soothing thing to do. Before long I had two sparkly borders, which makes me smile - and then I remembered I had to do the other side too!

So now I have a bling inspired Zumba pouch, which definitely stands out from the others - and that’s mainly how I bring the bling to Zumba - my ‘moves’ mostly still need quite a bit of work, but really I don’t care too much about that!