Head Gardener's Notes: Spring 2019

This year spring is a challenge, with unseasonably hot days followed by colder nights with frost. We have seen damage to the wisteria, roses and box hedges, but not enough to spoil the display.

After the plant moves of early spring we have been planting: Rudbeckia, Geum, Hosta, Nerine, Anemone and an annual called Agustache ‘Golden Jubilee’ has gone into the Jubilee and Blue & Yellow borders. Most of new plantings have been grown in our nursery alongside tomatoes, cucumbers, melon, sweet and hot chillies and lots of salad leaf varieties which are growing in the private kitchen garden. We are still growing several plants destined for the flower borders and will be planting them throughout the rest of the spring and summer season.

You might have noticed that more of the yew hedging has been hard cut as part of our long-term plan to renovate areas that have got out of bounds, this was seen most evidently in the Stage Garden where our cutting back has since revealed a pathway that had almost entirely disappeared under the hedge!  Renewal has also been ongoing at the visitor entrance with a comprehensive tidy and clear of old plants, opening up of the Horse pond, and new bulb & wild flowers planted around the pond perimeter which will reach its peak growth in a few years’ time. The final act of renewal is the containment of the Bamboo that has overwhelmed everything else at the end of Church terrace - it will be a long-term project to get on top of it, but work has begun and we look forward to reclaiming the vista that the Bamboo currently covers.

Now we are into May our Glorious Gardens weekend is on the horizon in the first weekend of June with Bonsai and Hanging Baskets workshops, tours and if the frost is kind to us, the 100-meter peony border in bloom. This will also be the first spring for our new apprentice Elliott who joined us in January as part of our training scheme and will soon see the gardens at their most colourful and vibrant. 

With best wishes,
Tony Wiseman