Ok, as I didn’t want to write an epic post last night -although that’s what it almost turned into, I thought I’d finish it off tonight. I think so far I’ve said we liked the place but weren’t too impressed with the range or quality of the vegetables.
The greenhouse/focal point in the gardens – above – is a really beautiful structure although I’m not sure it would quite fit into Vegmonkey Towers. The most exciting thing i found in there was the Greenfinch below, I know it’s dead and not very attractive, but there’s a purpose to this story. After pointing it out to some people working in the gardens, they spotted that it had a metal tag on its leg, that said ‘British Museum, London’ on it. So, upon getting home I did some research, as I do.
Turns out it wasn’t from the British Museum at all, but refers to the National History Museum – under the umbrella of the British Trust for Ornithology…who do bird tagging. Something to do with people of a foreign nature (see what I did there?!..nature…?!) being able to read the words British and Museum. I read here that they have 2400 ‘taggers’ ringing over 800,000 birds a year!
The view from the top of the mini hill (that we weren’t meant to slide down…) below was good as we could see a lot going on.
Anyway, back to flowers, most of the nice ones were covered in some form of aphids but i managed to caoture this wasp like bee fly hovering, which was nice.
On the fruit front, somewhere we are looking to venture soon, Ryton does very well – a really nice area with all sorts of varieties of raspberries, gooseberries and so on. The only thing that confused me was the lack of a roof on the cage, just a lot of string, wired over the top…does this keep the birds out?
Right, almost finished. The best bit about the whole place is below. The seed shop. The restaurant was nice and the food was good, but the seed shop…it was epic. I picked up a catalogue and thumbed through it as i walked up and down the aisle. The result you ask? £30 is the answer, but I got lots of exciting stuff to grow!
All in all, a nice day out, but now the search is on for something better!
Tags: bird tagging at british museum, ryton organic gardens review, ryton warwickshire
July 9th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Just for info, this Greenfinch (ring number TC67835) was ringed on 31 July 2005 at Brnadon Marsh, only 3km from Ryton. It was ringed as a juvenile, so was four years old when it met the window, which is a pretty good age for a Greenfinch. Full details will follow in the post shortly…..
Mark Grantham
BTO Ringing Scheme
July 9th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
I live just down the road from Ryton and I agree with you – the reality doesn’t live up to the hype. I would go for a wander round fairly often if it wasn’t for the entrance fee. I think they could do so much more with it. The apple day and the potato day are worth a visit though.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:44 am
I love that greenhouse. Shame about the greenfinch. Interesting about the National History Museum, I didn’t know they tag birds.
July 10th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Used to send off tags from birds the cat had caught, they sent back a little printout of their details. Amazed there are that many ringers.
I remember someone telling me that having fully enclosed fruit cages just traps the birds in with the fruit, I guess they are aiming to keep out pigeons etc not garden birds. Wish I had built a cage around mine with chickens, pigeons and my nephew about!
July 12th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Fascinating! Thanks for that – I take it you were pinged by me posting the link? Shame it wasn’t me that sent it in, would have liked more info~!
July 13th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Ohhhh, i like the look of the greenhouse – wouldn’t mind one at Manor Stables – now that would be impressive (but so would the bill, no doubt!). Shame about the Greenfinch. Mum and dad have a Wren in an old kitchen extract at the moment – its really sweet. And not dead.
July 15th, 2009 at 7:58 am
I just found your site through a Google search for ‘brassica cages’ – it came up with your posts about the ‘build-a-ball’ system. We’re puzzling over this just now for our broccoli, after mass ravages by pigeons this past winter. Currently swithering between buying a ’system’, which looks as if it won’t do both brassicas and blackcurrants, or building our own.
Anyway, I was interested to read your most recent posts about Ryton. We visisted there about 5 years ago, and like you I was underwhelmed by a lot of what I saw. My memory is of a lot of infrastructure (modern buildings and education area) and not so much meaty content. I wasn’t wowed by the veg. The composting display was interesting, and apart from that my kids spent a long time posting plastic vegetables into vegetable sized holes in the education centre. The shop was great, tho!
July 21st, 2009 at 10:48 pm
That ‘wasp like bee’ hovering over the scabious is a hoverfly, surely VM!
(My mange-tout are only just flowering, btw)
July 22nd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Cheers for the i.d Mal, like I said, flowers, creatures…not my bag! Gonna try to be successional with mange-tout next year.