July 2016
Our open garden event on 12th June was again very well supported, raising £425 for the National Gardens Scheme. The well-stocked plant stall proved very popular, not to mention the teas and home-made cakes. Many thanks to all our volunteers for helping out on the day, and to the many visitors that came.
The next major event in our garden calendar is the Challis Horticultural Show on Saturday 3rd September. Tea and cakes, Pimm’s tent, plant sales, live jazz and a silent auction – what’s not to like! The show itself is open to residents of Sawston and its neighbourhood, so we would welcome entries from othe
r villages, as well as Sawstonians. Exhibits are judged in the morning, then open to view in the afternoon. Entry forms are available from the Challis Garden summerhouse or from 54 High Street, or from our website at www.challistrust.org.uk/show. Good luck to all entrants! Please note that the date for the show was given as 4th September on the Challis printed calendar, but it IS on the 3rd: this is always a Saturday event. Our apologies for this.
The herbaceous beds are very colourful at present, partly due to the cooler, wetter conditions this ‘summer’, and should show well into September. Bedding plants raised in the garden – cosmos, begonias, zinnias – are planted to extend colour into late summer and autumn. The wildflower meadow and bee border are beginning to peak now. Good for the bees and other pollinators. Vegetables are growing very well this year without any watering. We expect good crops of potatoes, beans, beetroot and courgettes. As well as this fresh produce, jams, chutneys, relishes and honey are available from the garden. Do drop in to see what’s on offer.
The wilder parts of the garden are alive with birds at present. Family groups of blackcaps, goldcrests, goldfinches, great tits, blue tits and coal tits can be seen foraging in the t
rees. A local sparrowhawk uses a regular ‘plucking post’ in the garden, no doubt attracted by the many small birds. And swifts are nesting in the buildings on the High Street.
Our builders Ray and Graham are making good progress on refurbishment of the old pigsties, with concrete floors laid and repairs made to the flint and brick boundary wall. We hope this work will be completed by September.
In addition to a standard ‘National’ beehive, the new Flow Hive (from Australia) is now up and running, with a colony donated by our local beekeeper Richard Steel. It is rather late in the season, but with a good nectar flow, there may be surplus honey to extract at the end of summer. For any further information about the Challis Trust, See page 26 for details of how to contact us.
Mike Redshaw
Published in Sawston Scene, August–September 2016
Read MoreMay 2016
The Challis house and garden are becoming increasingly popular for visiting groups. We have welcomed several groups already this year, with more bookings for the summer period. It is very heartening to see the house and garden used for their intended purpose.
Our next event – for your diaries – is a garden opening for the NGS (National Gardens Scheme) on Sunday 12th June from 2pm to 5pm. The NGS raises about £2.5 million annually to support several major charities, including Macmillan Cancer Support, Marie Curie, Hospice UK and Carers Trust among others. We are very proud to participate for this cause. Entry is £3 per adult; children are free. Plants for sale. Homemade cakes and teas served, as usual, by our excellent catering team MC Teas. Do come along and support us. For more information, contact events@challistrust.org.uk.
Spring is now behind us and the garden team are busy keeping up with weeding and mowing, planting up the vegetable beds and raising bedding plants. There is plenty of colour as the early summer perennials and shrubs come into flower. The herbaceous beds, bee border and wildlife meadow will be at their best from June to August.
Plums and damsons are showing good fruit-set so appear to have escaped the sharp late frosts at the end of April. Most of our apples are flowering well; we anticipate good crops again this year. Several of our apple trees, however, are of unknown origin. We hope to identify the varieties by sending tissue samples for DNA fingerprinting to the East Malling Research Centre in Kent. Leaf samples will be collected in June. Nice to know what you are eating!
Horse chestnut trees are in full bloom at the time of writing – what a wonderful sight! In the coming months, some of our specimen trees come into bloom, often spectacularly. In June look out for frothy white and cream flowers on the black locust trees Robinia pseudoacacia and Kentucky yellowwood Cladrastis kentukea – both leguminous species from North America. In July, the yellow panicles of golden rain tree Koelreuteria paniculata (from eastern Asia) are equally impressive. Lots to look forward to.
There is always plenty of wildlife to see in the garden. Newts in the pond, butterflies and bees in the borders, many birds, including nesting wrens, collared dove, goldcrest and blackcap. Hedgehogs are present, though rarely seen. In mid-May, a fox and two cubs were spotted in the far corner, most likely the same vixen that appears every year to produce a litter. Luckily no moles, rabbits or badgers, which would not be welcome.
Work has started to refurbish the old pigsties in the garden to create a potting shed and additional storage space [pictured left]. This will hopefully be completed in the summer months.
We are very pleased to report that we have been given two new beehives for the garden, by a generous benefactor. These are not conventional hives, but novel Flow-Hives, invented in Australia. Honey is extracted directly by turning a tap rather than having to centrifuge the honey from the combs. They clearly work well in the hotter climate down under but there is little experience of them yet in this country: we are delighted to be one of the first to try them. We plan to set them up in June once the oilseed rape has finished flowering, to avoid potential problems with honey crystallising in the combs. Interested readers can learn more by searching for ‘flow hive full reveal’ on YouTube.
For more information, see www.challistrust.org.uk or check our challisgarden Facebook page.
Mike Redshaw
Published in Sawston Scene, June–July 2016 issue
Read MoreMarch 2016
First of all, a big thank you to everyone who came to the garden on Saturday 26th March for our Easter Activity morning. And an equally big thank you also to our volunteers for getting the garden ready, providing teas and helping with activities. Our events would not run without such great support. I am writing this in advance of the event, so I trust that everything went smoothly as planned!
Our next garden event is the Anniversary Fete on Sunday 15th May from 2pm. We will be providing teas, home-made cakes, soups and more from the kitchen. There will be live music from Sawston Steel Band and a host of different activities to suit all ages. Do come along and enjoy the event and the garden. Entry free; donations welcomed. For more information, contact us.
THE GARDEN
The garden team has been busy cutting back and tidying up and preparing for the spring and summer seasons. Visitors will notice that several more sycamore trees have been removed along the north side of the garden, letting much more light in. Suitable ground cover and shade-tolerant shrubs will be planted in these areas to augment the current plantings.
We now have a large stock of split sycamore logs for sale, suitable for storing for next winter. If you need any, please come to the garden during regular opening hours: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday 10am to noon, or Sunday: our Sunday opening times changed to 2pm to 4pm, from the second Sunday in March.
Our Spring/Winter Walk is becoming well established now, with good shows of early spring bulbs (crocuses, snowdrops and iris reticulata) contrasting with the bright red, green and orange stems of the dogwoods, Cornus spp. The winter-flowering shrubs have produced wonderful fragrance through February and March, the best of these being sweet box (Sarcococca confusa) and the shrub honeysuckle Lonicera fragrantissima – still well worth a visit. Snowdrops and crocuses are largely over, but daffodils should show well into April.
Our beekeeper Richard hopes to move his hives from their current location in the far corner of the garden to the permanent apiary site, as soon as building work on the adjacent industrial site has been completed and the boundary fences re-instated. Honey from our hives is available for sale (£5 for a 1lb jar) in the garden year-round. Have you tried some?
THE HOUSE
External work on the house has now been completed with the refurbishment of the windows at the front. This is a huge improvement to the front aspect of the house and the ‘street view’. Inside there is still much to do, with ongoing work concentrating on installing services to the first and second floors. Until the building work has been finished, all house and museum activities are on hold for the time being. But watch this space…
For more information check our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/challisgarden, or website www.challistrust.org.uk, or contact Rosie Phillips: chair@challistrust.org.uk or 560816.
Mike Redshaw
Published in Sawston Scene, April–May 2016 issue
Read MoreJanuary 2016
It was great to see so many visitors to the Challis House during the village Winter Fair event on 11th December. Mulled wine and fruit punch were flowing and the mince pies sold like – well – hot cakes! Craft group and home-made produce stalls were also very popular. Thanks to everyone for making the evening such a resounding success.
We are pleased to announce our garden events for 2016 (see page 2 of this issue). There are six scheduled events spread over the year, including an afternoon garden opening on 12th June for the National Garden Scheme. Our next event is the Children’s Easter Activity Morning on Saturday 26th March, which has proved very popular in past years. All the usual activities: treasure hunts, face painting, pond dipping, and Easter-themed crafts and decorations. Plus soup, teas and coffees for the grown-ups. For any more details about events, contact Sheila Blackwell on 01440 707322 or events@challistrust.org.uk, or check our Facebook page or website www.challistrust.org.uk.
THE GARDENWinter work continues in the garden in preparation for the coming season, under the guidance of our head gardener Ray. We are busy cleaning up and mulching the herbaceous beds, removing leaves and pruning fruit trees and shrubs. We plan to accelerate the removal of the remaining sycamore trees that are shading out parts of the garden. These areas will then be planted up with suitable shrubs and evergreens to add interest and diversity to the garden.
There are already good displays of aconites and snowdrops (it looks like being a very early Spring!). This will be followed by crocuses, daffodils and tulips in February and March, so do come along and enjoy them. Garden opening times are Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday 10am to noon; the Sunday winter opening time is 1pm to 3pm until 6th March. If you would like to help in the garden, please come and talk to us or contact Ray Reeve on 01223 834986. We’ll be pleased to see you.
CHALLIS MUSEUM
The Trust is very keen to put together the next exhibition, ‘Back to School’ pending completion of interior repairs and decorating, which is taking much longer than anticipated. If you have any local educational artefacts you could loan to the Challis Trust to display in this exhibition, we would be pleased to hear from you. Please contact our Chair Rosie Phillips on 560816 or chair@challistrust.org.uk for more details.
Mike Redshaw
Published in Sawston Scene, February–March 2016 issue
Read MoreNovember 2015
Our Children’s Halloween Activity morning on 31st October was an outstanding success. We thank everyone who came to carve pumpkins (we had to send out for more). There was a long queue for the beautiful face painting and the Crafty Barn was a hum of children trying something spookily new. Apple bobbing went down well, mostly down the children’s jumpers, and the scavenger hunt was very popular. The children who decorated biscuits in the house were very inventive. Most were eaten (not the children) before they left the garden.
Grown-ups and children alike enjoyed Andy’s pumpkin soup, homemade cheese scones, teas, coffees and squashes and all those spookily iced cakes. In fact we ran out of everything except teas and coffees! We have never seen such an excited crowd at one of our children’s events – the best yet.
We would like to thank all the volunteers who were serving, on kitchen duties, demonstrating, overseeing and helping in general with all the activities. You are all so valued and the directors are very appreciative of all the work you put into these events.
The Challis Garden is being cultivated and planted up for winter and spring blossoming. Please contact Ray Reeve, Head Gardener, on 01223 834986 if you would like to help. We have been lucky to have the help of Sawston Village College students who have learning and helping for their Duke of Edinburgh awards. The garden opening times are Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday 10am to noon, and Sunday winter opening is 1pm to 3pm.
The Craft Group is still going from strength to strength. You will have your chance to buy the beautiful crafted gifts they have produced along with pickles, chutneys and preserves when the Challis House opens for the Winter Fair on Friday 11th December. Mulled wine, fruit punch and mince pies will also be available.
Our beautiful 2016 Challis Trust calendar is now for sale from the summerhouse on opening days. Priced at £6, it will also be on sale at the Winter Fair.
The next exhibition at the Challis Museum will be called ‘Back to School’ – dates to come. The exhibition cannot yet be put in hand as work is still being carried out on the first floor. We would like to request local educational artefacts of all sorts for display to be on loan for this exhibition. Please contact our Chair Rosie Phillips on 560816 or chair@challistrust.org.uk for more details. Keep up with us on our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/challisgarden or go to www.challistrust.org.uk to see our new website.
Sheila Blackwell
Published in Sawston Scene, December 2015–January 2016 issue
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