Head Gardener's Diary - January
The ground is saturated again and there are puddles lying on
the grass. It’s making it quite difficult to clear away
the logs and mountains of wood chippings left behind by the
tree surgeons. We have moved chippings to the Autumn bank path
and to the little gate but the rest are going to have to wait
until we can get the tractor and trailer onto the ground again.
So we are concentrating on brambling and pruning instead. Every
year we come out of the top gate by the road, see brambles and
get to work. It gets easier year after year as the brambles
in this area never have the chance to get very big and we get
a bit further round the garden, but eventually run out of time
as Spring springs and we have so many other jobs to do. The
result of this is that the brambles at the far end of the garden
get left as Wildlife areas and very overgrown. I love wildlife
areas! (They save so much work.) This year, we have gone out
of the little gate to attack the garden from a different angle
– so we have started brambling outside the walled garden
and along the back of the Autumn bank and will continue back
towards the top gate, until we run out of time again. While
we get on with this work (I have four students helping me on
Mondays this term) I would like to thank the Friends who are
keeping the mixed border, rose garden and stream tidy as it
helps us enormously.
The two Horse Chestnuts which were removed from the centre
of the Cherry circle and from outside the Formal garden have
made huge differences to those areas. When I walk from the Gertrude
Jekyll border towards the Heather beds, it is almost unrecognizable.
It does give us scope for some new planting though which is
always exciting. The rest of the tree work has not had such
a devastating effect on the garden as most of it was within
the heavily planted boundary areas.
The sun is shining, so I shall go and do some more brambling.
If we get a hosepipe ban this summer, I shall eat my hat!
| Julia Wesley |
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