This 2 hour course is suitable for beginners and covers basic plant identification skills with an emphasis on the 
identification of common trees. On this course you will cover some basic botany and discover the secrets to identifying plants and deciduous trees during the winter when they have no leaves present. You will be able to put these skills into practice in your own garden and while out enjoying the countryside enabling you to engage with the natural flora of the region.
This taster session is also a good start for coming along to more advanced botany and plant identification sessions during the year. Look out for forthcoming posts with details.
The course will run on 17th March from 1-3pm and costs 20 Euros per person. The first part will focus on theory of plant identification and look at the plant anatomy that can help us to identify plants. The second part will be practical tree identification and you will look at common trees native to the region.
To book onto this course use the buy now button below. We will send you confirmation and further information once we have received your payment.
If you have any questions please use the contact form below:
Have a go at woodturning using traditional tools for greenwood crafting. You will create a ‘blank’ from a log section and turn it down into a garden dibber or sting line.
grafting your own fruit tree. We will provide you with a dwarfing rootstock and an apple variety to graft but if you have your own tree that you would like to propagate then please bring some along, use the contact form below to contact us to find out how to harvest grafting material from your tree.
If you enjoy this beginners course we will be offering intermediate courses later this spring to make chicken, cockerel or duck sculptures for the garden.
Have you ever wondered why the leaves on deciduous trees change colour in the autumn?
Chlorophyll reacts to certain wavelengths of light but these are limited, to make the most of the light spectrum plants also use other pigments similar to carotene that can react with a wider range of the spectrum. These colours are hidden by the intensity of the green chlorophyll in plants with green leaves. However, once the days start to shorten and the temperatures drop this triggers a process called abscission, in simple terms ‘leaf fall’. Plants need to be thrifty though, the main elements that make up chlorophyll are iron and magnesium but these can be in short supply within the soil when the trees come into leaf in the spring so the trees carefully extract these elements, drawing them back into the tree to store away ready for the first flush of growth in the spring. This is when the other pigments are revealed giving us the fantastic display of autumn colours.
This half day course will teach you some basic weaving techniques through the creation of a hanging fatball bird feeder. These make great gifts and are an attractive garden feature.
These alliums make superb contemporary cut flowers because they last well with no petals to fade, they are also excellent when planted in big groups within planting schemes of ornamental grasses, herbaceous perennials and other bulbs. They are a particularly good contrast with the lovely soft feathery grass Stipa tenuissima ‘Pony Tails’
