News and Events

Hopefully, July will be warmer and sunnier than it has been of late and we will be able to sit in our gardens and enjoy the fantastic display of flowering plants and shrubs very soon.

The obvious downside to all the recent rain is that although we have vigorous garden growth and our gardens look lush and green, we also have amazing weeds too!

Weeding, feeding and dead-heading

Control the weeds on paths and pull out weeds in your flowerbeds. Increase the feeding of seasonal patio pots and baskets – they will benefit from a weekly feed of liquid tomato fertiliser or liquid feed.

Dead-head bedding plants, annuals and Roses as this will encourage more flowers. If you cut back delphiniums and geraniums after the first flowers they should flower a second time, so give them a feed of Blood, Fish and Bone or a slow-release fertiliser.

If we are forecast some windy days, support or tie in any vigorous climbers or tall perennials to prevent damage.

Watering

We hope July will bring some hot Summer weather, so increase the watering for the plants if they need it.

Bedding plants, leafy vegetables, seedlings and new plantings and plants in pots are most prone to drying out. If possible, water your plants early in the morning or in the evening and avoid watering during the hottest part of the day.

Protecting from disease or pests

Some diseases and pests thrive in hot summer conditions, so check susceptible plants – such as roses – for issues such as blackspot, mildew and rust. Treat and spray as required.

Water features

If you have a pond, rake out any overgrown oxygenating plants and algae, topping-up the water levels using rainwater collected in your water-butts if you can.

Mowing

If the weather is hot and dry, try not to mow too often and raise the height of cutting deck on your mower.

Brown patches on lawns in hot spells are inevitable but the lawn will recover quickly, so there’s no need to water. It’s better to use the water for your pots, baskets and flowering borders.

Painting and refreshing

Warm, dry summer weather is perfect for painting wooden sheds, fences, arches and arbours. There are lots of traditional and other vibrant colours on the market to brighten or refresh any wooden structure in your garden.

You can see a poster below, detailing the new Priorities set for the Poringland Safer Neighbourhood Team at their recent online Priorities Setting Meeting.

• Burglary/Theft
• Speeding
• Violent crime

The Poringland Safer Neighbourhood Team website is here if you are interested (interestingly not updated yet with the new priorities above).

https://www.norfolk.police.uk/your-area/poringland

The area covered is Poringland and a number of surrounding Parishes, including ours.

Not exactly local! But might be of interest to some residents:

From Georgia Kossowicz
Programming and Partnerships Officer, The Norfolk Coast and Broads National Trust

Calling all History Buffs!

Are you passionate about the past? Are your friends and family fed up with hearing yet more about your historical interests? Then look no further, we are searching for enthusiastic volunteers to share Horsey Windpump’s story with our visitors!

One of 240 windpumps dotted over the Norfolk Broads, for many decades Horsey Windpump has been a prominent visual link with the history of the Norfolk Broads.

It has withstood floods, fierce storms, wars and a lightning strike that finally put it out of action in summer 1943. A huge restoration project has been undertaken since 2015, and finally, a fully functioning windpump is on the horizon!

You’ll be joining a friendly team with a wealth of historical knowledge. Our windpump volunteers engage our visitors with tales of Horsey’s history, share in the delights of working with others and there are always opportunities to help with fundraising, special events and anything else you may have an interest in. If you’re able to spare some time, you can sign up directly on the national trust website- myvolunteering – National Trust and search for Horsey (click on ‘more details’ below Windpump Volunteers article).

Or get in touch with us at the following email addresses;
Marianne.lawrence@nationaltrust.org.uk
Georgia.kossowicz@nationaltrust.org.uk

We hope to see you there at this exciting time for Horsey Windpump!

The next Parish Council meeting will be 7.30pm at the village hall, on Mon 5th July. The agenda is downloadable below.

Most residents will have received a small paper flyer from the Parish Council on these planning proposals by now.

The proposals cover the whole of South Norfolk, so there’s a lot of information which doesn’t directly apply to our villages. For that reason we’ve put this post together to summarise the parts of the proposals that you’ll be interested in.

Credit for the summarised info and downloadable files goes to the Parish Council, who’ve done a great job clarifying what it all means for us.

This post takes most of the text from the flyer, and adds some downloadable maps and documents. There’s a lot of text below but the summary is:

• Anyone with an opinion on these proposals should submit their comments during this consultation period, before 2nd Aug. Don’t miss your chance!
• In the paper flyer the contact email address was incorrect, the correct one is near the end of this post.
• There’s a virtual exhibition on the whole plans here: www.south-norfolk.gov.uk/vchap
• Below you can download maps of Alpington, Yelverton and Bergh Apton, showing exactly where the ‘preferred’ and ‘shortlisted’ sites are.
• There is also a downloadable document below showing the detail of each of these sites.

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Text taken from the Parish Council’s flyer:

Village Clusters Housing Allocation Plan Consultation

On 7 June South Norfolk Council opened a public consultation on a draft of its Village Clusters Housing Allocations Plan (VCHAP) that will allocate sites for 1,200 new homes in smaller villages across South Norfolk.

The consultation runs until 2 August and any comments must be submitted by then.

For the purposes of the VCHAP, Alpington, Yelverton and Bergh Apton form a Village Cluster. The VCHAP has identified two preferred and one shortlisted sites in Alpington, with no sites currently preferred or shortlisted in Yelverton and one preferred site in Bergh Apton. In Alpington, the preferred sites are the field behind Church Meadow for up to 25 dwellings (numbered SN0400 in the VCHAP) and extending the Settlement Limit in Alpington on the western side of Nichols Road near the School (SN0529SL). Also shortlisted as a reasonable alternative site for up to 25 dwellings is land on Wheel Road near the Reeders Lane/Burgate Lane junction (SN0433). The preferred site for over 25 dwellings is in Bergh Apton (SNO412) and is the former concrete works on Church Road. Maps showing these sites are displayed on the Village Hall and Mill Road Notice Boards.

The map can also be downloaded here:

And the Parish Council has extracted some relevant details for our villages from a much larger document. This document gives detail on each site in question:

The Parish Council has for many years objected to the principle of extending the established development boundaries of our villages and this latest plan would place further burden on our inadequate road infrastructure and services.

This is an important consultation affecting the future of our villages and we urge you to look at this Plan and comment on it.

You can do so by visiting www.south-norfolk.gov.uk/vchap where you can also attend the virtual exhibition. If you have difficulty accessing this information online, you can contact the South Norfolk team on 01508 533805 or email them at lp@s-norfolk.gov.uk

Next Parish Council Meeting

Separate from the VCHAP consultation, our Annual Parish Meeting will be held on Monday 6 September at 7.30pm (doors open at 7:15pm) in Alpington Village Hall. Please come to meet your friends, neighbours, and local councillors.

Further details will be posted on noticeboards and on this website closer to the date.

It’s nice when your teenagers help you out with the chores isn’t it?

While walking past Yelverton pond a few days ago, we noticed a new clutch of Moorhens had hatched and was being looked after by the ‘teenage’ Moorhens from the previous bunch of eggs that hatched a few weeks ago.

It’s quite interesting behaviour and isn’t common in birds. We suppose that it takes a bit of responsibility and effort off the parents, and gives a bit of experience to the juvenile ones before they grow up and presumably try to raise their own in future years.

We’re privileged to see that behaviour in action on our pond so close to home.

After a previous post saying there were 3 juvenile birds, there now appear to be 2 left, after some evidence that one got run over by a car by the corner of the pond. A big shame as that generation were doing so well. The sight of 4 more chicks takes the edge off though, fingers crossed for those doing well.

On the same walk a couple of Linnets were fluttering around and singing on some bushes, we’ve not seen those very often at all in the Parish, even though they’re not rare nationally. They’ve got a beautiful song and look great with a grey head, brown wings, and a bit of red on their chest.

And last but definitely not least, here’s another thing you don’t see every day, there were a couple of Red Kites over Garrick Field flying off towards Poringland a week ago.

Indeed, over the same couple of days there were posts on Facebook by Poringland residents saying they’d seen them.

It’s spectacular to see these birds over the Parish, there are apparently only 1800 breeding pairs of Red Kites in the UK, with half of those in Wales. So having a pair in the area makes our Parish (and wider group of villages) seem even more special.

The Parish Council (PC) has responsibility for the very old Veteran Oak tree growing on the edge of the Garrick Field (Memorial Field).

Along with many villagers, the PC recognise that this is a much loved tree and it’s presence is valued, it can be seen from the public footpaths and nearby housing on Church Meadow.

Imogen Mole South Norfolk District Council’s Conservation and Tree Officer visited and offered advice and compiled a report, below are some of her comments:

“Ancient and Veteran trees are exceptionally valuable and considered an irreplaceable habitat. This individual has a stem diameter that qualifies it as ancient and also a number of veteran characteristics including decay features, such as branch death and hollowing. It has a good functional crown and is adapted structurally to these characteristics but there is evidence of fire damage.

The features present on this tree contribute to its biodiversity, cultural and heritage value and because of the evidence of fire damage coupled with its location in relative close proximity to dwellings, it could be at risk of future inappropriate work or further damage.

I recommend a Tree Preservation Order (TPO)is placed on this tree to secure it’s long term future and ensure best conservation practice and management of this tree.”

If you are a BBC SpringWatch fan, the episode aired on Wednesday 26th May explained why Oaks are such a valuable habitat supporting over 2,000 species.

Ancient and Veteran trees are exceptionally valued and considered an irreplaceable habitat.

Imogen Mole, South Norfolk District Council’s Conservation and Tree Officer

If you’re interested in the definition of the terms “veteran” and “ancient”, click here for a good summary.

The Yelverton Oak now has a Tree Preservation Order (TPO) in place which will help to ensue it’s future for many years to come.

The PC are currently planning for the Oak to be surveyed by a qualified tree surgeon and following this for any appropriate remedial work to be completed.

This year Yelverton pond has been home to a family of Moorhens and a family of Egyptian Geese. Originally we counted 5 moorhen chicks, and 6 Egyptian Geese chicks.

As these things often go with wild birds, most of the chicks seem not to have survived, as far as we know it’s been because of natural predators getting them, which is a shame for the birds but all perfectly normal of course.

But some have thrived and made it.

There were 3 grown up young moorhens on the pond yesterday, foraging around, which was great to see.

This author believes the whole first clutch of 5 chicks didn’t make it, a new nest was built on the central island instead of by the road, and these 3 are from that second attempt. It was obviously a more secure location.

The Egyptian Geese must be proud of this beauty! Nearly fully grown now:

Elsewhere, we’ve heard of mallard ducks having a very successful year even though they got booted off the pond by the geese. 24 chicks from two families swimming around elsewhere in the village, so that’s also good news.

The sun has finally made a very welcome appearance and we have also had enough rain to launch our gardens into Summer mode.  Now we can start enjoying our gardens while doing some ongoing weeding, watering and feeding. 

Lawns

Continue to mow as needed, cutting the grass a little higher in hot dry weather.

Mulching

If your borders are in full sun and dry out quickly, consider applying a mulch of compost or bark on top of the soil between the plants to reduce water evaporation.

Feeding

Feed container plants, bedding plants and veggies. Liquid-feed tubs and baskets every two weeks if you haven’t already mixed in controlled-release fertiliser.

Bulbs

Lift Spring bulbs when their leaves have turned yellow. Put them indoors in a shallow box to dry then remove the dried leaves and store them in a cool dry shed for Autumn planting.

Greenhouses

Water the greenhouse to dampen it down in hot weather and ensure you have sufficient shading on the glass to prevent your plants from becoming scorched. Spray cucumbers with water to maintain a humid atmosphere for them.  Feed tomatoes, peppers & other greenhouse crops with a high-potash feed such as Tomorite as per the instructions on the bottle.

Harvesting

June is also the time for harvesting early crops – Strawberries, salads, spring onions and radishes you sowed or planted earlier in the year. You may also have the first onions – they are ready when the leaves turn yellow. 

Bring indoor plants outside for the Summer

Move any summer flowering house plants into the garden. They will brighten any patio area and benefit from the extra light.  

Relaxing

Roses are at their best in June, so try to take some time to relax in your garden and enjoy the lovely space you have worked so hard to create. 

Correction re Aphid treatment

In May’s Gardening Tasks, I suggested spraying roses with a washing-up liquid solution to clear greenfly. A colleague has pointed out that this is no longer recommended as many washing up liquids are not plant friendly. Please only use propriety pesticide or greenfly killer to clear greenfly in order to prevent possible damage to your plants and roses.

These tips were kindly contributed by local resident Cara MacColl

Jun/Jul edition of Eleven Says, the Newspaper of the Bramerton Group of Churches covering 11 Parishes.