Festival of Gardening for wildlife championed by Alan Titchmarsh
1-31 March 2011
“A garden without wildlife…
is like a kiss without a squeeze.”
Celebrity gardener, Alan Titchmarsh
speaking at the opening of the RBC Rain Garden at WWT London Wetland Centre, September 2010
Photo credit: Stop Photography
The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) is devoting an entire month to celebrating gardening for wildlife by organising a host of green-fingered events and activities at its nine visitor centres across the UK, offering advice on how to attract wildlife to your garden, as well as showing you how to use water wisely!
WWT’s Festival of Gardening has the backing of the country’s best known gardener, Alan Titchmarsh, who has thrown his weight behind this initiative to champion the link between gardening and wildlife conservation and highlight the importance of the sustainable use of water in your garden.
Alan said: “I happen to believe that gardening is at the sharp end of nature conservation. Wildlife is fragile, it’s true, but it’s also adaptable, and it’s certainly opportunistic. Create the right environment, and the wildlife will come. If WWT is able to build a magnificent garden for wildlife in the midst of a city of millions, just think what you can achieve in your own patch of land.
“The new RBC Rain Garden at WWT London Wetland Centre is a great reminder that water is the most precious of resources, and a well-managed garden pond plays a wonderful role in protecting that resource.”
Supported by NFU Mutual, the Festival of Gardening programme of activities and events at centres throughout March will include walks and talks covering topics including how to attract wildlife to your garden or build a butterfly garden. There’ll be demonstrations on subjects including how to create your own rain garden, build a mini-beast hotel or plant up a garden pond; and some centres will even have gardener’s surgeries where a panel of experts – including renowned garden designer Dr Nigel Dunnett – will be on hand to answer all your gardening queries.
Visit www.wwt.org.uk/gardening for full details of all the events and activities at each WWT centre.
Events happening at WWT centres during the Festival of Gardening include:
WWT Arundel T 01903 881530 West Sussex
Medieval herbalist 10, 17, 24, 31 March
For centuries plants have given us food, medicine, shelter, fragrance and beauty. Learn more from our Medieval herbalist. 11am & 2pm
Wild about art – growing Sat 20 March
Get those creative juices flowing using natural materials. Create cress heads and other green fingered fun. £4.50pc. Children must be accompanied by an adult (1 free pc). 11-1pm.
wwt.org.uk/arundel
WWT Caerlaverock T 01387 770200 Dumfriesshire, Scotland
Check in at the insect hotel
Advice on gardening for wildlife - check out our insect hotel in our sustainable garden
wwt.org.uk/caerlaverock
WWT Castle Espie T 028 9187 4146 County Down, Northern Ireland
Your garden Sat 5 & Sun 6 March
Discover plenty of tips from window boxes to allotments, growing food to eat, permaculture workshop and painting pots! 2-5pm.
wwt.org.uk/castleespie
WWT London T 020 8409 4400 Barnes
Pond planting Sat 26 & Sun 27 March
Free demonstration all about native plants for a natural pond and how ponds can be a real help to wildlife,11am-12 noon. Places limited. BE - call 020 8409 4400.
Gardening walk with a warden Sat 26 & Sun 27
March Tour taking in the highlights of the RBC Rain Garden: then discover a log garden where lizards bask and feed, and a nectar-rich garden for bees, butterflies and other insects. There’s also our bog garden – popular with newts and dragonflies. Our guide, Alwyn Craven, will give plenty of wildlife gardening ideas to try at home! 12.30-1.30pm.
Gardening for wildlife Sat 26 March
Our gardening expert Alwyn Craven will show you how you can easily provide homes and food for wildlife while still enjoying a beautiful garden. 2.30-3.30pm.
Clever composting Sat 26/Sun 27 March & Sat 2/Sun 3 April
Special talk on how compost heaps work, and are an eco-friendly, money-saving garden tradition providing fertile soil and a warm nutrient-rich refuge for small creatures. 4-4.30pm.
Ask the gardeners Sun 27 March
Get answers to your green gardening questions from some of the UK’s leading gardeners. Including Dr Nigel Dunnett, creator of the RBC Rain Garden; Channel 4’s The Landscape Man, Matthew Wilson, and our own Kew-trained gardening expert Alwyn Craven, plus Lesley Mair from Barn Elms Allotments Society (BEAS) and Anne Gatti, columnist for The English Garden magazine. 2.30 - 3.30pm. £6pp. BE call 020 8409 4400.
Gardening guru, author and TV presenter Gay Search will be giving her top garden tips in a talk at WWT London Wetland Centre. Sun 3 April. Tickets are £6, please call 020 8409 4400 for details.
wwt.org.uk/london
WWT Martin Mere T 01704 895181 Lancashire
Festival of gardening All month
Discover tips at special talks, learn how to create a log pile, tour our eco-garden to find out what you can do at home to create a sustainable garden and take part in a variety of family activities all month. Learn how the beavers are natural gardeners - 11am & 2pm. See our wormery, ants nest and learn how to
identify different types of soil. Weekend family crafts including make seed pots out of newspaper and a free art competition. Make Mini-gardens and help us to make a bug hotel. 1-4pm
Eco-festival Sat 19 & Sun 20 March
Talks, family activities amd family crafts - help us create a bug hotel, make minigardens, help us plant in Edwood and help create a wildflower area, discover different types of root systems when we dig things up. All day - Den building. See how slow you can ride a bike in the slow cycle competition Browse the eco-stalls and buy local produce.
WWT National Wetland Centre, Wales T 01554 741087 Carmarthenshire
Attracting wildlife to your garden Sat 19/Sun 20 & Sat 26/Sun 27 March
A chance to make insect hotels, habitat piles, bird/butterfly feeders. Activities for all the family. 2pm.
WWT Slimbridge T 01453 891900 Gloucestershire
Good pond; bad pond Sat 19 March & Sun 20 March
See examples of how to create a good wildlife pond and what a poor one looks like in this interesting and educational display in our foyer. Chat to our horticulture team for the best tips.
Activities for children
Themed arts & crafts sessions: make a butterfly, dragonfly, ladybird or frog. Make a plant pal or a bug hotel, have a go at a virtual pond dip.Paint a pot - take it home and watch your plant grow. £3 a pot (compost and seeds provided).
WWT Washington T 0191 416 5454 Tyne & Wear
Festival of gardening Every weekend in March
Our expert wardens and education team will be hosting a series of guided walks, workshops and craft sessions.
WWT Welney T 01353 860711 Norfolk
Jane Frost willow workshop Fri 11/Sat 12 & Fri 25/Sat 26 March
Make simple structures using a variety of techniques combining weaving, wrapping and braiding. £55 pp, plus £20 for basic materials. 10am-4pm. BE with a deposit required in advance. Contact Jane Frost on
01353 861944 or Jane@FrostArt.co.uk
(BE - booking essential. pc/pp - per child / per person)
Ends
For more information contact on Jenna Hopkinson 01453 891144 or email jenna.hopkinson@wwt.org.uk or prteam@wwt.org.uk.
www.wwt.org.uk WWT can provide high res images, videos, a range of quotes, pre-written features or interviews with a range of contributors including WWT’s wetland conservation experts, Dr Nigel Dunnett and Alan Titchmarsh. Please contact Jenna Hopkinson to arrange.
Notes to Editors:
• Dr Nigel Dunnett, a reader in Urban Horticulture at the University of Sheffield, is an expert in sustainable landscape and garden design, and naturalistic planting. He was involved in the design of the RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) Rain Garden with water management as its key focus, a vital message at a time when water conservation will become increasingly important as the climate changes. The Landscape Agency’s Matthew Wilson worked with Nigel on the garden’s design and together they have created a visual feast with a pictorial meadow, a rocky ‘dry’ steam and creature towers sited throughout the landscape to provide habitats for insects and small mammals.
• WWT saves wetlands worldwide – a critical habitat which is disappearing at an alarming rate. We act to identify and save severely threatened wildlife, such as the Madagascar pochard, which has been given a more secure future thanks to our decades of experience in conservation breeding.
• Our researchers have been monitoring wildlife in the UK for more than 60 years, observing changes and finding solutions.
• We put people at the heart of all our work, because conservation needs support to succeed.
• And we share what we learn with experts around the world and with our 200,000+ members, the 60,000 school children who come on an educational visit to our nine wetland visitor centres in the UK, and the million people who visit us each year to enjoy a wetland experience.
• We manage over 2,600 hectares of wetlands across the UK which between them support over 200,000 waterbirds and other wildlife.
• WWT members enjoy free access to all nine visitor centres and are kept up to date with developments through an award-winning quarterly magazine, Waterlife.
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