The Gardener's Blog

It is the first weekend of Spring… and snow is falling. Despite the cold, grey Winter there have been volunteers in the Garden every week.  On Thursday there is an average of 12 people.  On many other days volunteers come in to do specific tasks. Students have helped Pete on Wednesdays. Volunteers continue to make labels. Digitalis seeds are being germinated to be planted later. At this time of year the routine tasks are cutting back: the red border; the Miller border; the prairie planting; the long herbaceous border; cornus, grasses and epimedium near the entrance; dead stems in the gravel border and the geranium beds. There are also several areas … Continue reading →

The weather has continued in the same vein as the first half of the year meaning we have seen a lot of rain and not a lot of sunshine with no long, hot, dry spells.  This has benefitted all the newly planted areas which have thrived producing plenty of lush growth and extremely long flowering periods especially in the herbaceous borders. The main work in the garden has been maintenance tasks; mowing and edging the lawns until the grass stopped growing in late October, weeding in the herbaceous borders and dead-heading on a monthly basis to prolong the flowering season, all the hedges were trimmed during August and September and … Continue reading →

The weather this month has come in two distinct segments with the first two weeks bringing almost constant gloomy, wet weather day after day then the skies cleared to allow some sunshine and drier weather in the second half of the month. These weather conditions have really benefitted the garden topping up soil water levels and raising the water table creating an ideal growing environment for all the plants.  The borders that have been newly planted have been well watered and the plants are well established without any losses and the older borders many of which were mulched with compost in the winter are producing a thick, healthy flush of … Continue reading →