I have finished a very serious tidy of the woodland garden and I must say it has never looked better.  I have sent for some Trillium bulbs to plant.  Cannot afford as many as I would like so I am hoping that they will spread very quickly.  The under gardener is very fond to Turks head lilly so I have ordered some of them too. I was tempted to cut away the leaves from the Hellebore but the snow may be back so I think I will leave them a little longer.

More snow, I am so sick of it now.  Luckily it had all gone before Saturday afternoon so I spent some quality time tidying the gravel garden.  We need to put extra gravel down by next summer but for now I will content myself with generally chopping down and thinning out.  I have started a diary for the garden.  I wish I had done this before but better late than never I suppose.  I think that this will be more useful in years to come.  The under gardener gave me the Ivington Diaries for Christmas and if keeping a diary is good enough for Monty it is good enough for me. 

Happy new year!  I was out yesterday working in the woodland garden.  Finishing the clearing before the bulbs start and I cannot walk round without doing by interpretation of an ageing ballet dancer!  I bought a new hellebore and planted it by the front gate but left the leaves on the others planted there as I am worried about the weather coming back and spoiling the buds that are swelling very nicely below.  Think I will wait a few more days and see what happens.  I think one more "push" and that part of the garden will be finished with till the Spring. Aah Spring, now there is a thought! 

Snow, and deep snow at that, has finally hit us.  We battled out of the cottage this morning to get into Hereford to buy a turkey at the turkey auction there.  Our drive is long and on a steady upward slope and with a good 18 inches of snow now lying on the drive getting back up was quite imposable and now the car is abandoned just one quarter of the way up the drive and looking at Met check it could be there for some time.  Oh well happy Christmas to you all!

We are having a bit of a lull in the weather.  The amazing frosts have passed giving me one final opportunity to get some daffs into the woodland garden.  I had quite expected to have to take a mattock to the ground to get a big enough and deep enough hole/s so that I might plant the bulbs.  However, to my great surprise, I got the job done with just a garden fork!  The woodland is now tidy, and ready for the spring bulbs to put in an appearance but right now that feels like a long, LONG way away. 

My seed order has just gone in and I have done it again.  Far more seeds than space I will have for them once they need potting on. There are so many varieties that I want to try and so many tried and tested that I just must do again for next year.  With half an eye on both the sale of plants that our Gardening Club has each May, to which I send about 40 plants and then of course I need plants to sell on our NGS day.  This is of course the excuse that I give myself as I buy just one more packet of seeds.  That is the one extra packet of seeds to add to the 25 other packets I have already collected. 

I don't believe it!  We are told that we might get snow here by the end of the week.  I have just finished lifting the dahlia's, however, I have not quite finished chopping down all the dead stuff out of the long borders.  The BBC often get it wrong and I am keeping my fingers crossed that this is another one of these times.

I have a couple of bird feeders hanging from the cob nut tree in front of the cottage.  I love to do the washing up and being able to see the birds feeding there.   Today I was watching a woodpecker working his way round the tree.  The under gardener, who is very keen on garden birds, was not impressed with his antics in case he did any damage to the tree, especially when he moved on to the very old apple tree. Because of all the different trees in the garden there is always a wonderful variety of birds in the garden.  We have bats in the pine tree by the greenhouse and an owl in the woodland garden not to mention the hedgehogs in the garden.  All life can be found in this garden! 

It feels like only a few weeks since I took the bobble wrap down and now I am putting it back up again.  Not a big job but a very important.  It took more time trying to locate the paraffin heater.  Gosh hasn't the price of paraffin gone up  .  I had hoped to get the job done before the first frosts come as the tree fern and gunnera are next in line to get their winter coats on!

 

 

 

I just spent two days tiding up and the side of the greenhouse.  The "holding pens" located here were very untidy and the big pine tree which stands to the one side and drops thousands of little needles at this time of year.  The roof of the greenhouse was totally covered in the needles and blanked out all light. It took hours to clear all the needles up, tidy each plant stored in the pens, cutting down and weeding and in some cases just throwing out!  Now it looks so tidy I just have to keep walking round there to admire the tidy view!! 

It is that time of year when the seed catalogues start to arrive.  I have to keep a very, very sharp look out for what I end up spending.  It is not so much the money as the room that will be needed in the greenhouse! 

When we came to the cottage the pond at the front of the cottage has some gold fish in it.  These fish have become very important to the under gardener.  We had an attack some weeks back when a Heron had its supper from the pond and after that we have had the most amazing barricade around the pond to keep him away.  I have decided that it would be much easier to protect the pond if the plants in the pond did not stick up so far.  With this in mind I have decided to take everything except the water lillies out of the pond.  I spent two days taking everything out and then re-potting the lillies that we are keeping.  It was VERY hard work and so many of the plants had tangled themselves around each other and it took a good deal of effort and a sharp knife to separate them.   I am pleased, as is the under gardener, with the effect.  Now the winter net is over the pond to catch the leaves which are now coming down but we shall have to re-think covering the pond in the spring.  I am not having all that wood and wire hanging around for the summer. 

It is nearly the end of the summer and now I am planning what to alter ready for next year.  I love this time of year as the plotting and planning starts again.  I have decided to make more of the long borders as the summer starts to fade. I have been buying more Asters to add extra colour at this time of year.  The gravel garden comes into its own at this time of the year and I want the long borders which is behind the gravel to be more of a supporting act.  Well, it is a good excuse to go out and buy more plants.

It is that time of year when I just want to tidy up and start to put to put the garden to bed for the winter and make a list of all the corrections that need doing to the borders.  We had a talk at our gardening club from a lady called Julia Scott who has a walled garden in Warwick.  Her speciality is herbs and one of the most interesting parts of the talk covered the use of herbs in composting.  The under gardener and I splashed out on a packet of mixed herbs that must be mixed with water and added to the compost bit at a time. The result is supposed to be perfect compost in just six weeks!!!!  I'll let you know. 

It is the time of year that I find that I start to get very itchy to strip out the borders and start lifting and dividing.  It is dark now by 9pm and there is most definitely a nip in the air first thing in the morning and last thing at night and I noticed that the weather lady talked of an early Autumn.  We cannot complain about the summer this year, the garden has been very rewarding but next year.......................

There has been a heron lurking by the pond in the sunken garden and it appears has removed some of the fish in the afor mentioned pond.  The under gardener is very upset especially as his favorite and largest fish Goldy locks appears to have been taken for lunch.  We had just finished supper this evening when he returned for desert.  What a sight we much of looked to anyone passing with the under gardener hanging out of the dining room window shouting at the bird, the Doberman running round in circles shouting at what she did not know and me running after the poor bird with a rubber rake.  As a type this up the husband is patrolling the garden. 

This part of the garden was not good last year but this spring we dug in a vast amount of well rotted horse manure and some chicken pellets.  Over kill I hear you ask but no, the crops have been wonderful and I think that we shall be up for a repeat performance this autumn.  I took much more interest in this venture this year and added more colour to the garden by adding nasturtiums and pot marigold and the effect has been very good on the eye.  We had a lot of interest in this part of the garden during all our open days proving I think, that visitors like to see beauty and productivity going hand in hand.

Now that opening the garden to the public is over we can relax a little and enjoy it for ourselves.  I always find that August is a more relaxed month in the garden.  It is a time when I start to plan for next year, take cuttings and start sowing seeds.  We have visitors all week this week but I am sure I can squeeze a bit of gardening in.  In fact I think I shall go and start now!

There was a need to re-plant a line of lavender earlier this year.  I spotted some lavender planted with what looked like petunias(hard to spot as I was driving at the time) so I thought that I would give it a go.  The new plants were very small when I planted them in April so adding a petunia plant between each lavender fill the space quite well.  As I type this I can see the plants and they are really doing their stuff and look just wonderful.  The colours of the petunias work so well with the blue of the lavender.  The under gardener wants to do the same again next year but I think it will not work .  I can now see how people with plenty of money to spend could rip it all out and do it just the same again next year.  I, on the other hand, cannot so next year it will just be a line of now larger lavender plants. 

I cannot believe that after all the rain we have had in the past three years and now "they" are threatening a hose pipe ban in parts of the country.  We have four water barrels around but they do not produce enough water for a garden this size and of course with a thatched roof we do not have the ability to catch water that way.  I see that they are big adverts in the gardening mags advocating these huge water containers that are stored under ground.  If things get too bad the under gardener has said we will open up the well and install a pump to bring up water that way.  In fact with the bills going up and up with might just do that anyway.

Well, it is all over for another year and this time the sun shone and shone.  In fact it was a bit too hot but that is gardeners for you, never satisfied!  170 people came through the gate and when you consider that England were playing in the World Cup we were delighted to see so many people here.  We had decided that we would have a football free zone, and it worked, many people were trying to avoid the beautiful game.

I am sitting here a bit like a Zombie.  Our first opening went well and we are all but on track to open on Sunday for the National Garden Scheme.  We have put the opening date back by one week this year and would you believe it last Sunday with sun shon all day and next Sunday is looking a bit unsure.  I am checking all the weather stations twice a day ( at least) and hoping that it will get better by the big day.  The list of things to do does not appear to be getting shorter but with good luck and a fair wind we will be ready on time.  Fingers crossed. 

We are all but ready for our first opening.  It is a private visit for a flower arranging club.  The garden starts to come into its own the week of Chelsey Flower Show and goes on "performing" till the end of October.  This year we have five private openings and one day for the NGS.  I think by the end of that we shall be on our knees!

Not long now to our first opening.  Tomorrow in fact.  We appear to have caught up with ourselves and things are looking OK.  It is a private opening of about 25 visitors and I have the under gardener primed to serve tea.  Poor man, this is not what he thought his retirement would be. 

The under gardener always thinks that other peoples gardens are better or better kept than ours.  He always thinks other peoples cars are cleaner than his.  You get my drift.  We went to visit another garden this week that had been mentioned in the papers and along with some good friends we made a day of it.  It was a most interesting garden but SO untidy.  I think he may have a re-think on how well or not we are doing on presentation. 

One day I think we are on target and the next I am in a panic, and that is how it is today.  We have our first opening is just about a week and whilst that would appear to be a long time it is not.  We have rain forecast here and that should slow things up and if it starts to rain will it ever stop?  PANIC 

There is a large holly tree in the garden.  When we arrived at Holmcroft it was almost down to the ground and made mowing the lawn a very prickly business.  The under gardener clipped it till it was about five feet from the ground but it continued to hamper the growth of the beach hedge we put in.  In fact the shade it cast caused some parts of the hedge not to attain its full richness of the copper co lour it should be.  Well I just thought that I would tidy it up a bit more on Thursday when help arrived in the shape of the under gardener and a chain saw and now it is a fraction of the tree it was.  Two hours later light was flooding in.  The only problem was the mountains of holly that needed to be processed and that took for ever.  Still, done now, thank goodness.  

The six lilac trees that are around the garden appear to do very little for about 47 weeks of the year but by the end of May the wait has been well worth it and the garden is filled with the most wonderful fragrance.  Alliums, clematis, peony and wisteria are all doing their thing and look just wonderful.  We really could open this garden at this time of year but the help we need from the villagers and the farmer who's field we "borrow" for parking makes it impossible to open more than just the once.  The under gardener would also find the strain a bit too much! 

A week ago today our contractors started work on the steps up what had been the camomile bank.  Now finished and partly planted up we are totally delighted.  It has been very hard work when they left . The "tiding" up was up to us.  The main problem with this bank, which is south facing but slopes towards the cottage, is that half of it the soil is quite light and the other half is almost total clay.  Very, very solid clay.  I have just spent the afternoon digging it up and working barrow after barrow of compost into it in and attempt to lighten the soil.  I know that I will have to carry on with this for many seasons to come if I am to transform the soil and the right hand side of the bank and of course this now leaves me with the question.  What to plant. 

The camomile bank was a good idea but it has never worked as well as we had hoped, indeed instead of getting more and more established it has been a bigger and bigger problem each year with the plants refusing to cover the ground and give the effect we had wanted.  The large conifers that were on the edge of the bank have been removed as they were passing their sell by date and now we are having steps put into the bank and then completely re-planting the area (which plants are still to be decided)  The steps have been all most complete in one day and just a few finishing touches now to be done.  You will find pictures on the website.