Bird, Bee and Butterfly planting at Honeybuns Bakery
Currently we’ve been busy designing and planting out new areas in the Bee Shack Café gardens. The transformation has been wonderful to see since we started work this March. Our remit was to create gorgeous looking and smelling herb and flower beds. We wanted as many of the plants as possible to be tasty to humans as well as to birds, bees and butterflies.
Rosemary, lavender, thyme, sage, mint, roses, Buddleia and Nepeta are all now looking lovely and scenting the path to the Bee Shack Café.
Nasturtiums and very pretty mange tout plants have also been a big hit- providing us with nibbles as well as looking gorgeous.
We’ve been working with the very talented Linda Browne to achieve this vision of loveliness.
Linda gardens as sublimely as she ‘pots’. She has woven living willow arbours and arches for our delight as well as the sheltering wildlife. It was also Linda’s idea to make as much of the planting edible as possible.
Next on the list are trailing pumpkins, cucumbers in hanging baskets and a growing ‘mint tea bar’ providing mint tea for the Bee Shack visitors.
Everything has been planned to be at it’s most colourful for the end of July when we are holding a weeklong photo shoot for our second cookbook. We’ll share photos when they’re ready-a sneak preview of some of the new book photos.
Plans for the garden next year include a lovely cutting garden and more raised veg and herb beds. A natural wildlife pond is on the wish list, we’re just thinking hard where to put it-.this involves a lot of time, mugs of tea in hand, staring into the middle distance-.