Of parks and potatoes

We received an email at the beginning of the week from the gardeners at Allesley Park Walled Garden, telling us the potato we planted a few months back was ready to be dug up. The gardeners had planned to dig them up on Wednesday, but as I was at work, I decided to go with the alternative date of today. So it was that we hustled M out of the door and drove over to Allesley for the second week running, so she could dig up her potato.

We arrived to a garden full of happy gardeners bustling around what has to be one of the lushest gardens I've ever seen. The walled garden has very good soil and a happy group of volunteers to work it. We announced we were directed to someone who knew what we were on about, and were told we'd need to identify which potato was ours.

I spoke up - "Number 38."

Which raised eyebrows, apparently I was the first parent to remember, but as I said, I had taken a photograph!

Here lies M's potato.

A woman with a clipboard came along, saying that all we had to do was look up M's name which she did, saying "Ah, we must have M."

In a few moments, we were looking for No. 38. It took us a few minutes as the beds were overgrown and not that many potatoes had been dug up. It seems that heavy rain on Wednesday meant not many children came to dig up their potatoes and we were only the second family to stop by this morning.

The soil was turned over and within a few minutes, we had potatoes!

Potatoes!

A happy girl with her potatoes.

The job done, we spent some time looking at the garden, admiring the plants and the flowers which had been planted for the bees. M loves the vivid colours of the wild flowers, so we spent some time here.

Yellows.

Beautiful red poppies.

Pinks and purples.

Reds.

Purples.

White.

And of course, lavenders.

M was very excited by the sunflowers, as ours were eaten by pigeons.

When we finally tore ourselves away from the walled garden, we strolled around the park, looking at the wild flower meadow again. This time the thistles were covered in down, so M spent a lot of time launching the downy seeds into the air and blowing them.

After that we found a 'feral' apple tree. Feral, in that it was in a park, but not feral as in this is managed parkland, so presumably the Council know the tree and many others are here.

Examining the park's apple trees.

It was an impressive looking crop though, and I'm curious as to what happens to the fruit in our parks.

Still small, but definitely apples.

After that it was time for a play in the park before heading home for some lunch.

Useful Links:-
* http://www.allesleyparkwalledgarden.co.uk/