Head Gardener's Diary - March
It has been much drier this month so far, the ground has been quite workable. Apart from the Friends weeding, we have also been continuing the rose garden and have just two beds to finish. The students came out on 16th of March and pruned all the roses and I have finished the climbers so to complete the rose garden I have to finish forking them over, then I will feed and mulch all of the beds. We have also rotovated the summer beds, two of which will be tidied and levelled ready to sow the hardy annuals at the end of April. The other two will then be prepared for the half –hardy annuals which the students have sown and are now starting to germinate in the glasshouses. These will be planted out at the end of May – early June.
The Digitalis we sowed are now all pricked out and hardening off in the cold frames outside. Most of the groups in the garden have been weeded by the “Friends” and I am following round mulching them – I still have a few to do, but they are on my ever –growing list. I have put white hand-written labels by the species and sub-species groups and we are hoping to get the new green labels printed as soon as possible which will further define the groups as a collection.
We have started mowing finally, as the cold weather has kept the grass a bit shorter this year. The entrance and the formal areas have been mown with the cylinder mower and I am hoping to get out today and mow the large open areas as rain is forecast tomorrow. The Friends have bought a new mower to replace the Husqvarna and I shall be able to finish all the mowing on that next week. Just in time as the first Open Day is rapidly approaching. Slightly later this year so as not to coincide with Easter Sunday, the first Open Day is on 19th April for the National Gardens Scheme, who support a number of charities.
I have spent this morning clearing away all the molehills from the areas I need to mow and using them to fill in dips and holes around the garden. If any more appear I may have to deal with the moles themselves, but I usually wait until we are tidying up for Open Days as they sometimes give up on an area by themselves and save me the trouble of trying to catch them, which is not exactly easy. If they are not in a prominent area most people don’t notice them, ie. In the boundaries or in longer grass under trees, so I usually leave them. I have counted seven different areas of activity at the moment though so some of them are going to have to go!
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