For certain this winter has been full of surprises, with three different periods of snow and a lot of frosts and chilly winds. I don’t know about you, but I am ready for some warmer weather. Never the less, we have been busy here in the garden. And here is a wee taste of what we have been up to…
Last summer in the vegetable garden, it became quite noticeable that some shrubs and a few of the trees along the back fence were stealing a lot of the morning sunlight. In fact direct sun doesn’t appear in the sky overhead till after 1 o’clock.
As time goes by we often miss the gentle developments in a garden, and within a few years things are not going so well. It is a common problem: plants start to struggle in the garden and you are scratching your head wondering why! This situation is normally pointed out to most of us by somebody else who has a pair of fresh eyes!
So throughout January and February, the team reduced a lot of laurels and the tree surgeon took off a small limb from a large beech tree, to improve the light levels. So hopefully this year, we will have better results from the veg patch.
The ongoing project in the Rose Garden has kept us busy too. Here the tree surgeon took down two trees in February, to open up the rose garden to a lot more light and increase the air flow. This work hopefully will reduce some of the dreaded black-spot we suffer and has opened up a new vista into the Mulberry Beds and beyond.
And lastly just to say, next time you are in the gardens, you can’t miss the fact that the limes surrounding the main lawn have had a bit of a ‘hair cut’. The Limes have been pollarded in the past with two very different styles. One side has a pole style and the other created by Nick Boyes, more of a framework approach. You can decide which style you like best.
Rory’s Blog
22 March 2018
