Head Gardener's Diary - July
It’s raining again really heavily at the moment so I
am taking the opportunity to sit and type in my nice dry office.
The corridor outside is awash as the drains and plumbing can
not cope with the present deluge and the thunder storm is just
passing overhead. Fortunately all the planting is now completed
and – weather  permitting!
- we can concentrate on the weeding. The entrance area looks
reasonable as the bedding is performing quite well there at
the moment so we have started with the long mixed border, which
now looks very good, mostly due to help from “Friends”;
and the walled garden which was overdue for a bit of a tidy.
There is still a gap in the wall where the gate fell down, but
I believe this is now being sorted out.
The sun is very hot when it does come out now which brings
all the moisture out of the grass, making the garden very steamy
and humid and leaves us wilting and lethargic; in fact the most
active things around here are the weeds which seem to thrive
in the present climate.
Last month I mentioned we would be flailing the areas of long
grass planted with spring bulbs which have now died down and
any of you visiting the garden recently may have noticed this
has not been done yet, for a very simple reason, when I jumped
on the tractor and turned the ignition – nothing happened.
The battery was completely flat and refused to hold a charge
so we’ve had to track down and buy a new one and hopefully
next week…………it would be nice if it
can be finished before the next Open Day on 12th August. We
will be leaving the wildflower meadows until the poppies, chysanths
and cornflowers have gone to seed. There is a lot of Senecio
which seems to have come in with the seed and as this looks
like spreading around the garden we are cutting the heads off
through the cornflowers and will have to clear any areas where
no wild-flowers are growing so it may look a little bit patchy
this year, but at least there are some flowers there.
August is maintenance month, continual weeding, hoeing and
mowing so we will try to get the garden back under control -
did I mention this before? – weather permitting. I leave
you with another flash of lightening and a slightly more distant
rumble of thunder.
 Julia
Wesley
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