An invitation to a Winter Celebration

Winter is definitely here! There's an icy chill in the air, the dark nights are upon us and Advent calendars are being opened.

 Here at the National Wildflower Centre we are very much in the festive mood, with Christmas lunches being offered in the Cornflower Cafe - so make sure you book a place for you and your family, friends or colleagues.

 You can have two courses for £12 or three for £15 and you will not only get a lovely meal but will be supporting the centre too.

 

The cafe has been specially decorated for the lunches too, so make sure you look up and admire the hand-made decorations as you're tucking in to your Turkey with all the trimmings, Wild salmon or Vegetarian Porcini Pasta Parcels.

 Our menu also includes three choices of starter and three choices of desert including traditional Christmas pudding. I'm getting hungry just telling you about it!

 There is also a Christmas buffet menu option available at £8.95 per head for a minimum of eight people. Again please remember you need to book first.

 For further details and to book please ring 0151 738 1913 or email info@nwc.org.uk and remember to tell us the date and time you would like.

We are also just a couple of days away from our big FREE festive event - the Winter Celebration.

 Come along with friends or family this Sunday between noon and 4pm - there's something for all ages. We have lots of things planned, with something to suit all ages including free workshops for children and adults.

 

Don't worry about the weather as you can browse in our craft marquee for festive gifts and cards or pop into the information marquee for lots of helpful local advice. 

 

The Great Outdoors Health and Wellbeing Marquee will also be providing information to help people get more active through nature for better health and wellbeing. 

 The Great Outdoors project is part of Knowsley’s Target:Wellbeing programme. As part of its promotion of good health and wellbeing, the Wildflower Centre will have information on a new project, Get Growing, to encourage people to grow their own food and cook healthy meals.

Speaking of food - the centre's Cornflower Café will also be open, where you can warm your belly with festive hot mulled apple and cranberry juice; roast chestnuts; hot pork and turkey sandwiches; soups and homemade cakes.

 We are also delighted that we will be joined by HaVoc who will perform favourite songs with a live band. The choir was formed in October 2007 by students of years 7 to 12 from Halewood College. 

 And of course no Winter Celebration would be complete without Santa Claus who will be waiting in his comfy grotto to take note of what youngsters' would like for Christmas .

The National Wildflower Centre is Court Hey Park, Roby Road, Liverpool, L16 3NA. Please note there is limited parking available on site. If travelling by car, exit at junction 5, on the M62, or if you are going by public transport, contact Traveline on 0871 200 22 33 for bus and train times or check out www.merseytravel.gov.uk or www.nwc.org.uk

 

Half term fun and a family supper night

Hello again! Although the National Wildflower Centre is closed until March there are still lots of things going on here for you to put in your diary.

 Next week is half-term and the centre is offering a range of fun activities including one as part of the big draw. 

 On Monday (26th October) there is a collage session for just £2.50, on Wednesday there is a printing workshop (£2.50), Thursday there will be minibeast drawing (£2.50) and on Friday there is lantern making (£4). If you would like to come to one of the sessions at 1pm or 2pm then you need to book by ringing 0151 738 1913. Hopefully I'll have some pictures from these events for the next blog!

 

Another event to look forward to is our Family Supper Night on Friday 13th November. This will be a fantastic opportunity to enjoy some delicious food, storytelling and a torchwalk around the park. The cost is just £10 per head and under 15s eat free, you can also BYO. You will need to book by ringing the centre on 0151 738 1913 and please arrive at 6pm.

 Then of course there's the centre's Winter Celebration which takes place this year on Sunday 6th December between 12 and 4pm. This is a really popular event, and yet again admission is FREE. There will be lots to do, for all ages, including crafts, workshops as well as a Santas's Grotto and lots of scrumptious food and drink to buy in the Cornflower Cafe. 

 

 The National Wildflower Centre and Landlife have another reason to celebrate as they have just won the WalkWise Award 2009 at the Merseyside Transport Award. The centre received a beautiful glass trophy and a really cute green mini superlambanana for the best walking initiative or achievement.

The centre would also like to say a big thank you to everyone who supported the Coffee morning held at the National Wildflower Centre's Cornflower Cafe's. The event was part of the World's Biggest Coffee Morning in aid of Macmillan - Cancer Support on Friday 25th September 2009 and £230 was raised.

 The cafe is still open Monday to Friday and we are taking booking for Christmas lunches for December. Again please ring 0151 738 1913 for further details and to book.

Bonkers about conkers

Hello again from the National Wildflower Centre. It's a nice dry day today but there's a breeze in the air and there are falling and dropped leaves everywhere. 

 I love this time of year when all the trees are golden and red. 

As I drove up to the centre this morning there was a beautiful carpet of leaves everywhere. 

Then when I parked the car I saw that there were volunteers from Landlife tidying up the paths and sweeping up overgrown plants and old leaves. It looked like a big job!

Volunteers tidy up fallen leaves (above) around the National Wildflower Centre

photos by Susan Humphreys

I also spotted a couple of conkers when I got out of the car, and even more when I went for a walk around Court Hey Park. They look like they'd be good ones to do battle with.

 There's a conker competition coming up soon at Court Hey Park next to the National Wildflower Centre, and you don't need to bring any of your own as the Rangers will provide them. 

It takes place on Saturday the 17th of October. The National Wildflower Centre's Cornflower Cafe will be open from 12 noon for this event. The event starts at 1.pm but please arrive before that time for registration. Knowsley Greenspace Rangers who are organising the event will be providing prizes for the lucky winners.

I know nothing about conkers but the competition inspired me to find out a bit more about them. 

 Conkers are horse chestnuts but in America they call them 'buckeyes'. The tree was introduced in the late 16th century but another 200 years passed before people started to play 'conkers' as we know it.

According to the world conker championship website before that people used hazel nuts, cobnuts or snail shells. The conkers game evolved from 'conquerors' a game played with snail shells. I would imagine conkers would be a lot tougher!

 

There is also a feed the birds event taking place in the park on Sunday November 7th between 1 & 3pm. All bird feeding materials will be provided.

On my walk around the park I saw lots of birds, as well as the usual magpies I saw a robin and chaffinches, and I also spotted three grey squirrels and one red butterfly. Still to see a woodpecker here, although I've been tipped that they like a couple of spots in the park where there are dead trees.

 There are also lots of wildflowers to see in the park itself. 

There was even a dash of colour still there with some blue cornflowers and red poppies.

I have also ventured up to the wormery at the National Wildflower Centre after someone mentioned it in passing.

Luckily I didn't see any worms as big as the one hanging from the ceiling! 

The wormery has a removable panel so you can see inside, the worms prefer the dark - well I suppose its very dark underground in soil! 

In the wormery, worms eat their way through the vegetable waste they are fed and then gradually produce poo - worm compost! This can then be collected and used.

 You may also like to know if you chop a worm in two (yuck) it doesn't create two worms, the head may recover and heal but the tail end will eventually die. In fact more often than not you end up with two halves of a dead worm. Poor worm!!! 
There were lots of spiders webs in the wormery building too but I didn't see any spiders even though I heard on the news there are likely to be lots of them and Daddy Long Legs around this autumn!

Cutbacks that are good

I've had a busy day at the National Wildflower Centre today and have been out taking lots more new photos which you can see at our flickr group at www.flickr.com/groups/nationalwildflowercentre/
As soon as I got to my seat in the office I could see there had been a big change outside - all the wildflowers have been cutback as it's the end of the season.

The National Wildflower Centre looks very different now the visitor season is over - photo by Susan Humphreys

I spoke to Peter Frances, nursery assistant at the National Wildflower Centre, about the reasons why the wildflowers are cut back now.

He said: “The first reason is for appearance, and the second is that anything flowers and seeds has dropped its seeds now so it’s ok to cut it. We stack it in small haystacks and occasionally we get hedgehogs going into them it provides a home for them over the winter. If we take the stacks away to soon the insects on the plants haven’t chance to get away and move somewhere else, so they’re left for a few weeks.”
There has been loads of ladybirds this year and Peter says it’s been a good year for butterflies especially Painted Ladies, in fact he saw one just yesterday which is quite late on. There have also been lots of common blue butterflies and six spotted burnet moths.

The wildflowers are cut using a scythe mower and piled into mini-'haystacks' - photo by Susan Humphreys
I then asked Peter what they use to cut the wildflowers.
He said: “We use a scythe mower rather than a lawn mower, it’s like a hedge-trimmer on wheels, the blades work the same way, and it’s quicker than a strimmer. The stacks will rot down into compost and by cutting back it gives us chance to see where a species is dominating and then we can thin it out.”
There are lots of different wildflowers, cowslips, birdsfoot trefoil, kidney vetch, vipers bugloss, wild carrot, lesser knapweed and some wild marjoram.

Peter said: “There are poppies too but they’re not guaranteed to come back each year, the seeds are there but they haven’t germinated and the vipers has taken over, so it might be a case of moving the poppies. If the soil is disturbed though the poppies may come back again where they’ve been struggling. The wild basil has been fading too.”
There are also teasels left around the edges, which the goldfinches like to feed on. A flock of ten-12 is a regular sight coming over the building and the staff put out feeders too.
The wildflowers tend to start to come back in late February, when everything suddenly greens up.

I have also been introduced to two new faces at the National Wildflower Centre - two furry faces! Teasel and Sally Stray the cats.

Teasel the cat likes to hang out in the polytunnels or on the compost! Photo by Susan Humphreys

Sally Stray likes fussing and food - photo by Susan Humphreys

I also got to see the pumpkins that are growing behind the scenes and that are destined for the Cornflower Cafe - I suspect around Halloween!

Alison also tells me that they believe there's a fox living on the site too - I hope I spot it but I think I'd have to be here very early!
I've had my lunch in the cafe again - a very delicious mixed bean chilli - and noticed that you can now buy some items from the shop (which is closed until the new season) in there too. There are some books, bookmarks, trolley tokens, cards and eco pens and a few other items.
There was also a poster up advertising a coffee morning for Macmillan Cancer Support on Friday September 25th 2009, 10.30-noon. It's for a really good cause so come along if you can, and we'd also really appreciate any prize donations for the raffle.
Last week there was no blog as I went along to a Mersey Partnership tourism meeting. It was really interesting to hear some of the events being planned across Merseyside including the Picasso exhibition at the Tate and Go Penguins!
We'd love to have a penguin at the National Wildflower Centre if anyone fancies sponsoring one for us!!
We've also had a meeting discussing ideas for next year's Green Fayre and the Knowsley Flower Show - and there was some very exciting themes being suggested, but of course we have the Winter Celebration first, but I'll save that for another time.
See you soon
Susan

Buzzing around at the National Wildflower Centre

Hello again. The skies are looking very grey over the National Wildflower Centre today but so far it's staying dry. Seen a little bit of nature already, first of all I saw a heron flying over the M57 on my drive in. I love seeing herons in flight, they always look to big to be able to stay up there and remind me of the postman stork in Dumbo.
There was the usual mix of magpies and woodpigeons on the cricket pitch too and a great big slug waiting to greet me at the door. It must have been as long as my hand! I don't know what type it was, in fact until yesterday I didn't realise there was different types.
I took part in a bumblebee recognition workshop yesterday at Norton Priory which was really interesting and as part of it we went outside to see how many bees and what types we could now identify. We went into the Norton Priory's wildflower meadow which is still full of red, white, yellow and blue flowers and looks amazing and which was planted by the National Wildflower Centre! It's a small world.

Now I'm hoping I might be able to spot and identify some bumblebees at the centre when I'm on my break. It's trickier at this time of year as a lot of their colours fade with age, a lot of the time their bum colour is the giveaway!




Last week we had a group - many of whom had travelled from Stockport - here who were taking part in one of the centre's free HOW TO... workshops, this one was How To make a wildflower meadow. I took some photographs of them on their way round, including these two.



I wonder if they spotted this caterpillar on their way round, I'd love to know what type it is, leave a comment if you can help!
Well I think that's all for this week. Don't forget although the centre is now closed for the season our Cornflower Cafe and conference centre is open all year round. For more details visit our website www.nwc.org.uk
Bye for now.

Welcome to the National Wildflower Centre's new blog

Hello and welcome to the National Wildflower Centre's new blog Where the Wildflowers are!

 

My name is Susan and I have just started volunteering at the visitor attraction near Liverpool. I will be helping with digital marketing once a week and getting to know all about the National Wildflower Centre. This is the office building where I work, it has great views overlooking lots of wildflowers and there are lots of happy faces smiling back at me - 

 

 

If you look closely you'll see that they are scarecrows made by schoolchildren from Liverpool and Knowsley.

 Today we have quite a few visitors in who have travelled up as a coach party from down South. They are also admiring our friendly scarecrows! Here are some photographs I took of them last week.

 

 We have lots of events and workshops taking place all year round at the National Wildflower Centre too, today we have visitors who have enrolled on our free How to make a wildflower meadow course which is supported by the Great Outdoors Project. Tomorrow's minibeast model making workshop looks set to be a sell out too, there's certainly lots of inspiration to be found around the centre. Today I've seen lots of slugs who have come out after the rain, last week was drier and I saw bees, butterflies and this tiny spider!

 

 

My first experience of the National Wildflower Centre was when I visited the Knowsley Flower Show here earlier in the month. I really enjoyed looking around all the stalls and picked up a few treats from the farmer's market, including delicious vegetarian black pudding and a scrumptious flapjack. I also enjoyed seeing the birds of prey demonstrations although everyone held their breath when one bird flew off into the distance and looked like it was going to come back!
Speaking of good food I have also enjoyed my first lunch at the centre's Cornflower Cafe and have tested the delicious cake too! Last week I had a very filling cauliflower, potato and leek bake - yum yum! The cafe is open Monday to Friday all year round and at weekends during the visitor season.
Well I hope I've given you a little taste of the National Wildflower Centre, if you'd like to know more, I'll be updating this blog every Wednesday and you can also visit our website at www.nwc.org.uk, or take a look at our flickr group, our facebook fan of page or follow us on twitter at www.twitter.com/WildflowerNWC we look forward to hearing from you soon!