8 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Gardening
April 13-19, 2015 marks this year’s National Gardening Week in the UK. The Royal Horticultural Society started the annual event four years ago. It aims to raise awareness and encourage everyone to do more gardening.
The benefits of gardening to people and properties are widely known. Surrey-based garden supply centre Longacres.co.uk says gardening and all the minor activities that come with it has a positive effect on your health, well-being, and home value. More than that, however, it is also an activity that is always worthwhile.
In honour of the National Gardening Week, and to entice everyone to do more gardening in their homes all year round, we have dug up some interesting facts about everything gardening.
1. Under Section 23 of the London Royal and Other Parks and Gardens Regulations of 1977, feeding or touching a pelican or a deer is expressly forbidden, unless written permission is first obtained, presumably from the park management, not from the animal.
2. Garden gnomes made their way to England from Germany in 1847. Sir Charles Isham hoped the decorations would attract real gnomes to the garden.
3. The world’s longest cucumber measured107 cm (42.1 in) and was grownin Wales by Ian Neale. The cucumber, presented at the Bath & West Showground in Somerset, is enough to make about 50 rounds of cucumber sandwiches.
4. After having your fresh pot of brew in the morning, sprinkle the coffee grounds in the garden. These make for an effective snail and slug deterrent.
5. In 2013, the Chelsea Flower Show welcomed garden gnomes to the event for the first time in the show’s history. The lawn ornaments were originally banned from the show’s gardens.
6. In a 1999 survey among homeowners, respondents answered “garden too small for work” as the eighth most common reason for hating their home.
7. Pollen from hazel, willow, and other trees are full of protein. This gives bumble bees essential food in the early spring before the flowers bloom.
8. Ryder Cup founder Samuel Ryder originated the idea of selling seeds in “penny packets”. He built a lucrative business based on this concept.
Even if it’s past the National Gardening Week, gardening should be an activity we all should partake in all year long.
