Of Mice and Volunteers

I had become quite obsessed by rain during May, or rather the lack of it. That was until today, the last day of May, when some of the lack of the last couple of months was dumped on the gardens in one day. It is now a sunny evening after the downpour. I know we need the rain but it could have fallen during the night, or on a day when we were shut, but oh no, it had to rain on a Bank Holiday.

The Kitchen Garden is becoming a bit of a challenge as the seeds I’ve planted in the greenhouses continually get attacked by the mice. Mice are particularly fond of any type of squash: pumpkin, melon, courgette... they keep eating them. Even the sunflowers have been decimated. I have finally decided to start some of the remaining seeds off on my own kitchen windowsill. And the carrots; is it possible that ants are running off with the seed? All I see on the carrot patch are ants and no carrots. Ah well.

At the beginning of the month we had a volunteer from Slovenia for a couple of weeks.(see pic) Irena is a student of Horticulture in Slovenia and needed to do some work experience as part of her course. She has family friends in Worcester who arranged for her to help out for a couple of weeks in the gardens, and she was such fun. Towards the end of the month we also had a young lad Chris, who is keen to learn more about horticulture and offered us a week’s work experience. We tried to arrange for a range of different tasks so that Irena and Chris could both experience as many aspects of the gardens as possible.

In the gardens we seem to have been over run with ground elder in just about every border we have. Its a bit of a challenge at the moment. We are expecting a group from the Royal Horticultural Society at the beginning of June, and are trying very hard to at least get the main borders tidy.

June Tasks

Water hanging baskets every day
Shade and ventilate greenhouses, and keep paths dampened on warm days.
Feed plants in borders, and start dead heading flowers.
Thin out hardy annuals and veg sown in the garden.
Remove suckers (growth from the roots) from roses, lilac and other suckering shrubs.
Remove spring bulb foliage when it will pull away easily.
Remove alge and blanket weed from ponds etc before it becomes a problem
Make sure that tall border plants are adequately supported: pea sticks or canes and string are usually sufficient.
It should now be safe to plant out remaining bedding, including those cannas and dahlias.

Where is the rain?

April has been a tough month, with the lack of rain meaning that watering has become a bit of an obsession with me. Even throughout the Easter Bank Holidays, and Royal Wedding and Mayday celebrations I have been in the gardens watering. I have also started to become obsessive about checking the weather forecast in the vain hope of some rain. The lake and horse pool are so low I am rather worried.

Like many people I expect, I allowed the local TV signal to change to digital without changing my TV or getting a digibox. Of course we lost all our channels so resorted to listening to the Royal Wedding on the radio in the entry hut with Janet, the gate girl on duty on Friday. It was actually very moving. We strung a line of red, white and blue flags across the hut and felt very patriotic. I think a grand total of 19 visited the gardens on Friday; we really are a nation proud of our heritage, pagentry and the Royal Family.

Miss Berkeley had enormous pleasure decorating the main entry gates (see pic) for the Royal Wedding. She also decorated the tea room gardens and the white bridge over the road with the help of Joan from one of the flats. She was a little concerned about what Mr Berkeley would say but it was all vey much appreciated by the visitors.

Next week we are pleased to have the help of a student gardener from Slovenia. She is with us for 2 weeks to learn all aspects of gardening in a large country estate. I hope that she is able to take some old traditional skills back with her when she returns home.

The kitchen garden display is beginning to take shape, although the lack of rain has caused a bit of havoc with the root crops, and we haven’t yet planted out all that I would have liked to. The paeonies and lilies however seem to be thriving. The low rainfall has meant that fungal infections that often destroy the flowers in wetter seasons have been kept at bay. We are expecting a fantastic display.

See you soon

Kate

May Tasks

Try to keep ontop of the hoeing and weeding
Feed roses and shrubs with a general fertiliser; rhododendrons and camelias would benefit from an ericaceous feed.
Plant up hanging baskets, but keep them protected in the greenhouse or frost free conservatory and don’t forget to include some slow release fertiliser.
Cut the grass whenever conditions allow.
Plants that are growing in pots would benefit from a feed
If you removed your pond pump last autumn, now is the time to check it over and replace it for the summer.
Trim back shrubs that have flowered over the late winter, eg jasminum nudiflorum, removing the flowered shoots to keep the shrub within its boundaries.
Clean patio slabs and stonework to remove alge etc.
Trim back spreading alpines such as aubrietia and arabis after flowering.
It looks like we may be in for a dry summer so a water butt or other water collection system connected to the guttering is a good idea.

Herbie...

So much has happened since last month’s blog, its tricky to know where to start. Firstly, the gardens have come alive with all the spring blossom and the daffodils are beginning to look amazing. March has been beautifully sunny, and it has almost been too hot to work in some areas of the gardens.

The blossom seems to be going over so fast but then the purple tinted leaves of the malus take over and give a fresh hue to the wooded areas. I was waiting for one of our earliest magnolia to come into flower with the hope of taking some really good pictures this year. Unfortunately, as often happens, just as the flowers were beginning to open, a sharp frost clipped the petals. However, the other magnolias that were in tight bud at the time are fine and are now beginning to open.

We opened on wed 23rd March and are now in full flow. The Tea Rooms are now under new management and are really worth a visit. The new proprietors are trying to make sure that they only use local produce, and that includes veg and fruit from the Kitchen Gardens.... which makes for very low ‘food miles’. They are offering hot and cold meals, afternoon tea on proper china, and they even have an alcohol licence...

Across the winter I have had a couple of pheasant following me round the gardens. We named them Herbie (see pic) and Harry Lightening. So don’t be suprised if you suddenly find a pheasant coming out of the woods and rushing towards you... they won’t attack, they are only after a little bit of grain.

The work on the fountain in the Millennium Garden is finished and I had the task last week of refilling it. When tested however it was noticed that the fountain flowed unevenly over the two top levels. This meant that someone had to come in with a stone grinder and gently shave a little off the rims to make them level for the water to flow down evenly. This also meant that my newly filled, and beautifully clean fountain became white and cloudy with all the stone dust, necessitating another draining, cleaning and refilling . A gardeners work is never done.

April Tasks

Construct runner bean wigwams or other supports and sow bean seeds, beetroot, radish, spinach, carrots, winter brassicas and peas.
plant those early potatoes as soon as the weather allows
Start to sow annual bedding and climbers. We sow ours into 1/2 seed trays and put them in a mist unit but your pots or trays would do equally well tucked into a closed, clear plastic bag until they germinate.
Trim back shrubs that have flowered over the late winter, eg jasminum nudiflorum, removing the flowered shoots to keep the shrub within its boundaries.
prune back hardy fuchsias to 2 or 3 buds from their base.
keep hoeing when the weather is warm and breezy to remove small weeds.
If you removed your pond pump last autumn, now is the time to check it over and replace it for the summer.
Begin to remove winter protection as the weather warms up.
Feed roses and shrubs with a general fertiliser such as Growmore or a specialised rose feed.
Feed camellias and rhododendron if looking a bit yellow. They require a special sequestered iron food.
Plants that are growing in pots would also benefit from a suitable feed.

Underneath the arches...

I think that this has been one of the toughest few weeks we have had in a long time as we are down to half the usual number of staff. Debbie has been very ill with a nasty virus that affected her breathing and Steve seems to have had a serious allergic reaction to something that we have yet to identify. This has meant that the usual schedule of work has been rather heavily modified to ensure that the main areas of the garden are tidy, ready for opening in three weeks. Chris and I have been working all the available hours, and this is when we are really appreciative of the volunteers who make such a difference. One of our regular volunteers even offered an extra afternoon to help out when she heard that we are short staffed.

Seed sowing has started, with the early peas and beans, and some ornamental plants for the kitchen garden. We will soon have all the greenhouses full again. We have also started the parsley as I intend to replace all the clumps this year. I also had a very encouraging chat with the new tea room managers, who would like to use as much of the surplus kitchen garden produce as possible in soups and salads. The tea rooms are being revamped, and a whole range of tasty food will be available again when the gardens are open.

The work has started on repairing an archway and rebuilding a fountain. The fountain just needs some sort of waterproof lining and it will be finished. The basic archway has been completed (see pic), but the brickwork surrounding it has yet to be finished, and all the coping stones in that section are also due to be replaced. When Miss Berkeley saw what the builders where doing she decided that the completed wall would be the ideal spot to show off her sculpture of a pair of partridge. The sculpture is lovely but it is a bit of a task moving it from the top of one wall to the top of another as it is quite heavy, being attached to a concrete base. Do see if you can spot it when you visit. There is also another set of partridge elsewhere in the gardens. Perhaps you might like to keep a lookout for those too.

Best wishes from a very tired Kate