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Head Gardener's Diary - April
The first Open Day was a week later than usual, as our “regular” weekend of the second Sunday in the month was the Easter holidays. It didn’t make a difference this time as the weather remained beautiful, which makes the Garden look beautiful and the visitor numbers were double last year’s. You’d think with an extra week to get the Garden tidied we would have had it looking immaculate but we did run out of time again and never got around to finishing the Gertrude Jekyll border nor the Jungle, but these will both be cleared and hopefully forked through by the next Open Day on 10th May, which is for the University Playgroup and very much a family-orientated Open Day.
The pansies in the formal garden are still going strong, despite the pigeons “pruning” them back overwinter and some pathetic specimen digging up about four dozen of them for their own use. Despite the thieves we managed to plug most of the gaps so its not too noticeable, just the odd gap here and there. It still looked better for the Open Day than last years display when cold weather held back the tulips which then flowered beautifully before the second Open Day in May. These things are just beyond our control.
The cherries still look really good, I noticed a lot of people sitting down around them last week having picnics and taking photographs. As all the other trees are also now in leaf, the whole Garden looks a lot less bare. It is now the end of April and we are finally getting the April showers, which is making everything fresher and causing the grass to grow. It did this exactly the same time last year – just as I’m about to plant out the new batches of Digitalis. Still, they can wait a few days.
We had 70 students in the Garden last week. They were split into 3 groups and were having lectures and taking part in various practicals, including scrub clearance and coppicing (near Swiss Cottage), hedge planting, design and positioning of bird boxes, hedge layering and seed sowing. They also had a day out visiting various wildlife sites. The course is on-going so further groups will be back to maintain the areas which have been coppiced and to plant the wild-flower seeds sown by this group, to encourage more wildlife into the Harris Garden.
Julia Wesley |
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unusual wildlife spotted in the Harris Garden, June 2007
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