It's always glorious weather when education starts again in September. Our new trainees embarking on their City & Guilds Horticulture course with Grow for Life on Tuesdays loved this good weather, as we worked outside on our new potting benches.
This is an adult community learning course supported by Bath City College and the Community Interest Company Grow Yourself, held in the Park’s Nursery site amongst the greenhouses in Victoria Park.
Our first session with our new cohort of nine introduced them to Echeveria from the Crassulaceae family, native to semi-desert areas of Central America and Mexico. Bath Parks use these plants for their 3-dimensional displays across Bath and the other local towns.
Our Echeverias needed propagating, removing all the small plantlets that had formed round the parent plant. These new ‘bonus’ plants needed a fresh start, pulled clean from the parent plant. They would be grown on ready for their time in the displays next season.
Our team of trainees made light work of this first task, planting out neat rows of them in the fresh compost-filled seed trays, and tidying up the parent plants along the way. After a well earned break, we also found time to pot on some Digitalis purpurea 'Sutton's Apricot’ (bee-friendly foxgloves).
Our new group of trainees worked well together, getting to know each other a little more over lunch and are looking forward to session number two next Tuesday.
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