Latest News from the Garden
I was delighted to be interviewed for the latest issue of the weekly magazine, Garden News. I am featured in the “My Favourite Place” section where I talk about why I love Stonehouse Cottage Garden. You can read the article here Find out more about Garden News Magazine here Find out more about Stone House Cottage Garden here
Pulmonarias come into their own over winter. Whilst the leaves of most herbaceous plants die back, the leaves of most pulmonarias are at their best, giving a stunning silver and green cover. Some varieties flower in December and January, giving lovely colour in the depth of winter and with a good selection you can have pulmonarias flowering from December through to May. I have been thinking lately about the plants I would take with me to a new garden. Sometime, with advancing years we will have to leave our three-acre patch and move to a smaller garden. Which of the over 100 varieties of pulmonaria would I take? These are my 10 favourite pulmonarias: the ones I could not live without. Pulmonaria ‘Stillingfleet Meg’ Pulmonaria ‘Mary Mottram’ Pulmonaria ‘Sissinghurst White’ Pulmonaria rubra ‘Rachel Vernie’ Pulmonaria ‘David Ward’ Pulmonaria ‘Stillingfleet Meg’ I love this; it is healthy and not rampant. The…
We were delighted earlier in the year to win the Selby Business Award in the Social and Environmental Business category. In November Heidi Green from Selby District Council was able to come and present the award (socially distanced of course) to Vanessa, with the helping hand of the seated girl statue! To win this award we had to answer many questions about our green credentials and also about social inclusivity. By the time we entered these awards, we had already been awarded the Gold Status for Green Tourism in 2020. We are also short-listed for the same category in the White Rose Award this month, so let’s hope we make it three in a row!
We are delighted to have been short-listed in the Ethical, Responsible and Sustainable category of Welcome To Yorkshire’s White Rose Awards 2020. This is the second successive year we have been short-listed, receiving a bronze award last year. We are hopeful that our improvements this year will bring us more success. We are the only business short-listed in this category from the East of York so we are looking forward to flying the flag for our area. Highlights of our application were: Inspiring a new generation of gardeners by showing that a garden can be both wildlife friendly and beautiful Achieving Green Tourism Gold status Focus of our website on our ethos of sustainability Our long history of sustainability going back to our purchase of the property in 1975 Management of our rare ancient lowland meadow Managing the garden without fungicides, pesticides or chemical fertilisers Low food miles with all…
Artists are continuing to have a hard time as lockdown rules mean so many of their events and exhibition spaces have been cancelled due to Coronavirus. This is just one of the reasons that we have worked hard to be able to re-open the exhibition space in the tea room and to extend the August sculptures in the garden this summer. Not only is it supporting the artists, but it gives our visitors more interest and more reasons to return. Art for Sale All the artwork on display will be for sale, giving a much-needed boost to the local artists. Although many have been able to run virtual exhibitions, there is nothing like seeing the artworks in person to encourage sales We are proud to be able to support local artists between now and the end of September. The tea room offers a lovely light exhibition space for hanging art…
We were absolutely thrilled to be awarded Gold status for Green Tourism by Visit England. This is the top award available through the certification programme that recognises the commitment of tourism businesses to become more sustainable. This came hot on the heels of us receiving a bronze at the Welcome to Yorkshire White Rose Awards for an environmentally sustainable business. To receive the Visit England award all our green credentials were checked over, including things like our model of boiler in the tea-room. We were marked on our approach to energy usage, saving water, waste disposal, ethical buying, minimising food miles, promoting biodiversity and having a sustainable ethos. This award is acknowledged world-wide as an indicator of an environmentally friendly business and we look forward to sharing our sustainable ethos with our visitors this summer. We are not resting on our laurels. Every year we look at how we can…
David Baker from the Butterfly and Moth Group continued his regular moth trapping and recording throughout the year, setting traps on 9 evenings. New species this year have included the many-plumed moth, small elephant hawk-moth, shoulder striped wainscot, cream-bordered green pea, shaded broad-bar, angle-striped sallow, rusty-dot pearl, bedstraw hawk-moth, featheres gothic, feathered thorn, brick and four micro-moths including the rarely seen Loxostege sticticalis. This takes the total number of moth species recorded here at Stillingfleet Lodge Gardens since 2012 to 107 micros and 234 macro moths. You can read the full list of sightings in 2019 below and the full report since 2012 here Bedstraw hawk-moth Let’s start 2019 as we did on Saturday 20th April and were rewarded with a steady catch of early fliers, although nothing new to site. Home catches had been slightly above normal as the late winter had been reasonably mild. 70.066 …
August is sometimes a bit of a quiet month in a wildlife garden as the birds have finished nesting and many of the foliage plants have not yet adorned their autumnal colours. It is good for butterflies and dragonflies. If you visit the garden on a sunny day look out for peacock butterflies, red admirals, tortoiseshells, commas and painted ladies among the flowers and dragonflies hunting round the pond. But this year as you walk round the garden you will also see a lot of animals: Chris Moss is back exhibiting her lovely wire sculptures in the garden. Her workshops here are always sell-out events and our visitors love her life-like sculptures, which will include pheasants, geese, hares, owls and foxes. But the art doesn’t end there – a visit to the tea room for refreshments (including Yorvale icecream) will give you the opportunity to see an exhibition by two…
We are absolutely delighted to have been shortlisted for the Ethical, Responsible and Sustainable Tourism category at the Welcome to Yorkshire White Rose Awards 2019. We are one of just four businesses to have been shortlisted in this new award for 2019. It is lovely to be recognised for the hard work we have put in over the last 40 years to make Stillingfleet Lodge Garden and Nursery and ethical, responsible and sustainable business. You can read about just some of the initiatives we have in place to implement our ethos of sustainability here. The announcement that we had been shortlisted came just before our annual Wildlife Day when we celebrate the wildlife in the garden, illustrating just how much we have achieved in encouraging wildlife to the garden. We will find out whether we have won at the awards ceremony on 25th November at the Leeds Direct Arena. This…
We were delighted to welcome the Catherine Scott and Chris Etchels from the Yorkshire Post to the garden recently. They were writing an article on places to visit in Yorkshire and resulted in us featuring in the magazine on 25th May. In case you missed it, here’s the link to the feature on the website. Top 100 Plant Nurseries We have also featured recently in the Gardens Illustrated Magazine’s Top 100 Independent Nurseries. We are also host to a Gardens Illustrated Masterclass again this summer and we are very honoured to be recognised by this prestigious publication
