All posts by Janita Vanhala

Goodbye Chichester

Today it’s our last day at working in West Dean gardens. It have been nice and we have learnt a lot new things in gardening and in everyday life.

Tomorrow we are leaving early on the morning and we will get a train to London. We have booked a hotel for us so we can enjoy a day in London. Our flight leaves on Saturday at Heathrow airport around 6pm.

It’s nice to go home but we all would have loved to be here a little longer than 6 weeks. 6 weeks is a short time to get to know the town and everything around it.

We thank everyone who made this happen and we are grateful of the opportunity to get to see English way in gardening and in life.

xoxo, Finnish girls..

– Hanna, Tinja & Janita –

Some weekend plans

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We made a new friend yesterday. It was a Robin (Punarinta). When we were weeding, it came to look for a worms. It came really close and was so cute!

Monday will be free because it’s bank holiday here. Here Mayday is a bank holiday and it’s always the nearest Monday.

We have made some weekend plans. Our weekend is fully booked. On Friday we are going to museum at the Chichester, The Novium.

On Saturday we are going to Brighton, again. This time to see the beach and Brighton pier. We are interested to see Brighton pier’s amusement park.

On Sunday there is Open House at the West Dean college and we are going there. We got some free tickets to attempt the open house.

On Monday our plan is to go to Portsmouth and there to the aquarium.

Here are our colleagues.blogi9

– Hanna, Tinja & Janita –

Works from yesterday

Yesterday the weather was really weird. We saw sunshine, really strong wind, rain and hail. All in the same day.

Me and Hanna were copping and pruning hydrangeas yesterday. We also were weeding and tidying up the border.

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Tinja removed old and bad looking plants and rearranged the pot flower display.  She also removed already grown chillies so that they wouldn’t take all the energy from the plant. Removed tip growth bud from chillies so that the plant will grow sideways.

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– Hanna, Tinja & Janita –

What have we been up to..?

We have been 2 weeks (soon 3) in England now and it have went quite good and really fast.

We have eat the English breakfast at 12 o’clock afternoon in restaurant, went to Brighton doing shopping, saw some live music and met friendly people.

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Hanna’s vegetarian breakfast

Brighton was beautiful, although all our time went shopping that day so we need to go there again to see more of the beach. To get to the Brighton from Chichester we needed to take the bus to Little Hampton and from there a bus to Brighton. The journey took about 3 hours but it was worth it.

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“Best” picture of us

blogiYesterday when we were going to work, our bus didn’t arrive. Apparently it broke on the way. So we didn’t arrive to work on time, we called that and explained it. The next bus was on time and we get to work only a half hour late.

– Hanna, Tinja & Janita –

Replanting orchids

blogi5Why?
If the pot is too small and orchid have grown too big for it. If they are really old and if there is dead parts that you want to remove.

How?
First take the orchid you want to replant off the pot, carefully. You can divide the plants by cutting them parts. As big as you want.
Make orchid growing media
4 parts bark
1 part perlite
1 part charcoal
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Mix them together and put small amount to bottom of the pot. Orchids prefer little bit smaller pots.
Put the orchid in the pot and fill rest of the pot with growing media. Planting has to be quite tight.

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Remove the flowers
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Final result after dividing and replanting

– Hanna, Tinja & Janita –

Hello from the other side

Hello,

We are three horticultural students from Jämsä college. We arrived to England, Heathrow airport last sunday. We are staying here six weeks in total, five weeks remaining. Our work experience place is in West Dean Gardens at Chichester.

Our flight went well and our journey to Chichester from London was a bit difficult but we made it! Our flight left Helsinki-Vantaa airport on sunday (3.4.2016) morning 7.45. We were at the Westgate Halls of residents around three o’clock. We all had separate rooms with own bathrooms and showers. We share a kitchen with three other students and it was pretty dirty… But after we cleaned it, it’s okay, but not what we expected.

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West Dean Gardens is at West Dean and we have to take a bus to get there. It takes about 20 minutes by bus. Gardens is big and beautiful. It’s more like a show garden, everything must to be clean and good quality.

There is working ~10 permanent workers and every week around 15 volunteers to help to keep the gardens looking good. There is high expectation of our skills, language and knowledge. It is bit difficult to understand some words about gardening because we haven’t had any studies in profession english.

Workers are really nice and helpful. That was a relief that work atmosphere is nice, makes it easier to fit in.

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On our first week in West Dean Gardens went fast. On first days we get to know to the place, we had car ride with Jim to explore Gardens’ lands more closely. There were lots of sheep.

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We are looking forward to what the next 5 weeks will bring to us.

Best regards,

Hanna, Tinja & Janita, JTP14.