Flower Power

Hello everyone, I know I've been a little quiet over the last few weeks... it's just we've been a tad busy... I'll tell you all about it!!

It's been a tough couple of months, lots to do and only a few volunteers and even less rain... everything is looking a little droopy at the moment, I have been doing regular rain dances (obviously when I'm on my own otherwise people might think I'm nuts) but to no avail! I am still hopeful... not often I actually hope for a nice tropical storm but we really need one at the moment to soak the ground good and proper.

The reforestation project we have been doing with Usona has been making good progress. We had 2 planting sessions last month. On the 5th June we had about 15 volunteers come out and help us including 2 of our junior rangers Jase and Katie and we planted about 200 plants and trees all over the island. In the morning we planted ornamentals at the Housing Foundation offices and also at the Governor’s Mansion (we even had the Governor Berkel and Commissioners Schmidt and Sneek come out and help us plant!) Then in the afternoon we tackled the area across the road from Kingswell resort. The area was excavated recently and so was starting to wash away with all the rains. We hope that the trees will help to keep the soil where it's supposed to be from now on!

Two weeks later we planted more trees and agaves at Zeelandia beach, again for erosion control and also to help tackle the issue of sand-miners. It is illegal to drive onto the beach and collect sand but people still do it. We have used all kinds of barricades and different methods to block people from doing it over the years but apparently they are desperate to destroy the beach and keep on finding ways around. This time, Jess (our Marine Park Manager) placed large truck tires out where they have been driving down (they are massive and they needed the boom truck to put them in place!) We have now filled them with soil and have used them as giant plant pots for coconut palms so we are hoping that will keep them off the beach!

We now have a new Director as well, Steve Piontek joined STENAPA last week and has been going around the different areas we look after and getting to know the lay of the land... he did tell me this week that he wants to come to the garden and weedwhack... what can I say, I think I'm gonna like this guy!

We also had a visit from Maxime Verhagen, The Dutch Minister for Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation. He arrived with his party for a tour and had lunch in the pavilion. It went very well and they enjoyed the garden, sampled some of our fruit (Genips - I had to give an demo on how to eat them) and passion fruit.

We had a garden session for Summer club this week and we changed it up a little. Instead of going to the Botanical garden we went to the Congo Preserve and Joshua gave us a fab tour of his fruit plantation. The kids really enjoyed it... well he has a trampoline and I can't compete with that at the Botan and now he even has a pool! Of course because it's Joshua it's totally eco-friendly. He had a tank already that he cleaned out and filled for the pool part, he also had a spare pump from his irrigation system so he has rigged a proper filter system cycling the water around and everything... all solar powered of course! We ate a lot of Guava and had a really good time... many thanks to Joshua for hosting us! Next garden day will be over at Green blends near Zeelandia so something else new and exciting for the kids to do.

So that’s all that we have been up to, next week our latest batch of lovely Volunteers leave us. That came around far too soon if you ask me... so I plan on getting everything I can out of them next week and we might even re-build one of the children's garden walls.... woop woop!

I will update on happenings soon and if I can get the internet to move a little faster I will post you some pics again...!!!

as ever, much love from the garden on the golden rock!

ps promise I won't make you wait this long for another post!