Head Gardener's Diary - October
Despite the fact the weather has remained mainly dry and mild it did manage to throw down one very heavy shower, right in the middle of the afternoon of the last Open Day! The rest of the month has been quite nice for the time of year and this final week of October is beautiful, mild and sunny.
The students I had helping me this Summer have now all finished; they are back on their courses doing their final year. We have got a lot done in the past couple of months and the Garden looks reasonably tidy. I have been on holiday for a couple of weeks and the Garden always looks quite different to when I left it. The grass has decided to grow finally, but only in clumps and patches. I have flailed all the longer grass areas again (I did them all last month) to tidy them up and we have mowed the rest of the Garden where necessary. As it is still so mild I suspect we will be mowing again although it is the end of October.
The leaves are falling everywhere and I have already cleared a couple of areas only to return next day and find them completely covered again. The horticulture students will be coming out next month and will use the leaf-blower and rakes which clears a lot of the worst areas. The first year horticulture students have been out last week and cleared away all the annual plants from the Summer beds in the middle of the Garden.
I am not rushing to clear the formal garden as the Geraniums are still flowering and will continue until we get a decent frost, as will the Dahlias at the entrance. We will remove the Lobelia around the edges as that has all finished flowering. The reason I am not in a hurry is because we have sown Polyanthus to go in the formal garden to flower in the Spring. Unfortunately as these were germinating in the cold frames outside, something decided to have a little dig in the seed trays and has destroyed about half of the seedlings. We have salvaged what we can but have only half as many as we need at the moment so I am having to resow to make up the numbers.
That’s about it this month. I haven’t finished the hedges yet but the weather this week is looking good so I should get pretty close to finishing them. Well, I shall try to get them done before Christmas anyway!
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