Last year WESC was lucky enough to enlist the help of the prince’s
trust who dedicated a couple of weeks of their time to help develop the
gardening area at WESC.
We designed and created a raspberry growing area. WESC
had been donated some old decking boards which were perfect for building
raised beds and pathways.
To start with we had to plan the dimensions of pathways, accessibility, aspect and spacing for soft fruit growing.
Using the boundary as our base line we triangulated the measurements from that. Cleared and mowed the area.
Marked with paint, and then set to work lifting the turf and levelling.
We put in posts at all corners and marked using string lines.
Fixed the edging lengths to the posts, adding additional post to strengthen.
Then we laid the landscape fabric.
Next, we built the raised boxes that we would grow the raspberries
in and fixed them into the ground.
Then we covered the landscape fabric with bark chipping and levelled
with rakes.
We added the organic material and compost to the raised beds.Dug in some base fertiliser.
The path took a bit longer because we had a lot of brambles
to pull out, but once cleared we laid fabric and bark chipped.
Lifted and pruned the autumn fruiting raspberry canes and planted, making
sure to maintain the original planting height.
Watered and mulched.
Hey presto ready for some sunshine!
A big thank you to the prince’s trust for all their efforts
with this project it has been a real success!
