Plant – Page 4 – Otley in Bloom

Butterfly garden in Gallows Hill nature reserve

We were asked to plant a Butterfly garden in the car park of this nature reserve. The area given over to us is reasonably large with a young conker sapling growing in the middle which will eventually destroy our planting but for the next few years we should be able to offer nectar and flowering plants for an extended season and for a range of butterflies.

First we had to dig over the space and mark it using gifted stones to stop cars parking on it. Then, using leaf mold from the uncleared streets of Otley, plants from our gardens, some re-cycled plants from Leeds Parks (by agreement) and some bought in plants we managed to plant this up. We decided to use the weed surpressing medium to cut down on maintenance and that should stay covered up with the leaf mold. Only time will tell. Let’s hope for a bit of rain as this is an impossible site to keep watered.

And a final touch, a sign.

May 2022

We came back to tidy up the bed today and to deal with what turned out to be the results of a four week drought. We added some new plants (thanks Phil Knight) plus some others from the allotment and member’s gardens have filled in the holes.

We have also put up a rudimentary fence using local dead tree branches to offer targets for visiting dogs. Hopefully if they use these twigs they will stop marking the plantings.

Mid January 22

Charles Street car park is normally a very busy space with just a few green areas. We have tried to maintain a planted area here over the years but with cars parking on it and some over large plants in the area it has always struggled. So we litter picked the whole car park and then cleared the bed, prior to laying down a weed maintenance cloth covered with a lot of street leaf litter which we cleared from nearby street. New plantings and some yellow stones to ward off cars may keep the area nice in 2022.

Queen’s green canopy

As part of the Queen’s platinum celebration the Queen is asking for trees to be planted and reported on her map at https://queensgreencanopy.org/ . Otley in Bloom have put five into a piece of unused verge on Ilkley Road and here is our certificate. Our trees are a mixture of local Chestnut, Sycamore and other types. They are planted in scrub land which would normally fill in with trees in the next few years. If you want help with planting trees then get in touch.

Wellcroft ginnel planter

This ginnel runs north south from Wellcroft to Cambridge Stree and can be a little dank, so we listened to requests and put in a planter and some tall thin bug-hotels,

Yorkshire in Bloom 2021

With YiB unable to attend Otley to carry out a full review of the place this year, under Covid, things have been a little different. However, thanks to the work of our excellent treasurer, we managed to win two awards.

These were for our litter clearing projects back at the start of the year and our on going work to support pollinators, wildplants and animals.