January 2019 working blog
Jennifer Wright – Student Gardener
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| Galanthus plicatus 'Trimmer' |
As it is sleeting heavily outside, this is definitely the
perfect time to write my first entry for the Garden House website. First of
all, I believe I should introduce myself. My name is Jennifer and I am the 2nd
year Professional Gardener’s Guild trainee here at the Garden House. I
have been here 5 months already and I can honestly say that everyone here has
been so welcoming. Before coming here, I spent my first-year placement at
Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, what a complete contrast to here. Waddesdon
Manor is a beautiful Victorian French renaissance style chateau in the middle
of the English countryside with huge amounts of garish annual bedding. The
contrast is stark and actually completely wonderful. I am not the only trainee
here. We are the Jen’s, myself (Scottish Jen) and Cornish Jen.
It has been all about the snowdrops here at The Garden House
recently. I am totally flabbergasted, in a good way, just how many there are.
It has been such great fun finding out their names as they have been coming
into flower. Some of them are just fantastic, ‘Grumpy’, ‘Mister Stinker’ and
‘Ermine Lace’ to name a few. As one of my colleagues put it “Why would a
snowdrop be called Lace? There is absolutely nothing Lacy about snowdrops!” However!
As snowdrops have been the main focus of this month. I decided to let you know
about another January blossomer.
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| Clematis 'Winter Beauty' |
Clematis ‘Winter
beauty’ is a winter flowering climbing perennial. Now I wasn’t on board with
this plant at the beginning. It looked a little boring in the autumn when it
was first pointed out to me but then after New year it began flowering with a
bang! Today, it has definitely wormed its way onto my favourite winter plant
list. It has gorgeous white flowers which nod down to the ground like a bell.
The flowers aren’t scented but the plant makes up for this by being so
floriferous.
Botanical name: Clematis
urophylla ‘Winter Beauty’
Family: Ranunculaceae
Common names: Funnily enough, Clematis.
Where is it at the Garden House: We grow ‘Winter Beauty’ here
against the tower in the walled garden. The stone provides the perfect backdrop
to the white flowers. Growing it against a wall offers protection from cold
east winds and a sunny position keeps the plant warm during winter. It isn’t
the hardiest of Clematis but definitely worth a shot if you have a sheltered
position in your garden which needs filling. To be honest with you, this is a
plant I would make space for even if I didn’t have any left. With the winter
weather, plants that flower at this time of year are a welcome site for us
gardeners.
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| Mulching the terraces - before picture |
As gardeners, we work outside most days of the year unless
the weather is completely atrocious and it isn’t worth slowly freezing to
death. Then we come inside to thaw out. This time of year is cold, wet and grey
but we still go outside. I am often asked by my friends, who have completely
different careers such as engineering or film, what we would do in the winter
because what could we possibly do? The plants aren’t growing and the weather is
so cold. I think I have to explain what I do most of the time to them anyway
but regardless there is still so much to do. Weeds never stop growing, they
just get smaller and more annoying in winter, one day of warm weather in January
and they are germinating all over the place. This brings me nicely to what we have been
doing this month here in the garden. To gardeners, January is the month for
tidying up, cutting back any leftover herbaceous, mulching, pruning and project
work. Oh, and planning out for the rest of the year.
January is perfect for tidying up borders by raking away
leaves, weeding out any hard to reach plants in summer and reshaping any beds
which have gone wonky over the summer. Our invaluable volunteers help us every
day and we couldn’t do it without them. Raking up leaves is a great way to do away
with any slugs and snails which may be overwintering under the protection of
fallen leaves. Plus, you can use leaves to make leaf mould which benefits your
borders by adding essential nutrients such as phosphorous, potassium and
nitrogen back into the soil. We don’t make leaf mould here at the moment but we
do add them to our compost heap. The compost that we amass over the year is
turned every few months to make sure everything is well rotted down and to
contribute to aerobic composting. This basically just means adding oxygen into
the heap. Oxygen contributes to aerobic composting by heating up the pile and
speeding up the decay of plant material which means we can use our compost as a
mulch on a yearly basis.
Just like leaf mould, using compost as a mulch on our borders
gives back to the soil and creates a much better space for growing plants in. On
top of this, thick layers of mulch help to suppress weeds, retain moisture
during the hot summer months and protect the roots of plants during the cold
winter months. I am personally a massive fan of mulching especially as
gardeners we often cut back herbaceous growth and remove leaves. In nature,
these would rot down where they are and feed the dormant plants for the
following year. All plants, trees and food sources combined such as wheat, rely
on this system to stay alive. This is the delicate balance of the eco-system that
has been created over millennia, that as humans we begin to interfere with.
Composting and mulching help to keep this balance on track. Constantly removing
leaves from borders in our own gardens without replacing these nutrients
somehow would eventually exhaust the soil and it would become so poor that
nothing would grow. Thankfully, this takes a long time and can often be
reversed with the right care.
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| Mulching the terraces - After picture |
One of the most asked questions here is “What type of mulch
is it that you use in the Walled Garden?” Well… that is an easy one to answer.
We use bracken mulch which is cut down locally. Bracken mulch - or Pteridium aquilinum - works in
the same way as leaf mould and compost. The only difference is that is takes
slightly longer to break down and when it does, the resulting compost is
slightly more acidic. Bracken mulch is very good at suppressing weeds and it is
good to look at, these two points definitely puts in my favour.
In all of my textbooks and resource books, it states that
Winter is the one of the best times to prune trees and shrubs. However, not all
shrubs. As cutting back some early flowering plants would take all of their
flowers off and you would be wondering in spring and summer why they aren’t
flowering that year. It is always best, if you don’t know, to look up what you
want to cut back before taking the proverbial plunge. I must admit, I don’t
always do that but thankfully, I like to think I have amassed enough
information over the last few years to make the decision quickly. Plants are
pruned in the winter as the trees are sleeping. Being dormant, helps them to
tolerate having limbs chopped off like having anaesthesia before going for an
operation. In spring, summer and autumn, the life blood of trees flows through
their vascular system so strongly that if cut at the wrong time will cause them
to “bleed out” as the tree continues to try and feed that limb with energy. It
isn’t as dramatic in most cases as it would be for humans but definitely best
avoided. So far, I have spoken about tidying up, mulching and pruning. That
just leaves project work.
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At the beginning of the Waterfall construction
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This year’s “project” is our new waterfall! I have been
tweeting about this on and off since the start of December. Since then we have
made so much progress and it is looking fantastic. Our head gardener, Nick, and
our gardens foreman, David, have been working their socks off to get this area
ready for opening fully again in the spring. At the moment, this area is
cordoned off as we are still moving stone around. The waterfall has been built
at the bottom of the Acer glade with the hopes that it will be an unexpected
and peaceful place to chance upon. I have to say, I am impressed how quickly it
has all come together. It has been built with stone found around the site that
has been dug up on previous occasions.
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Turning
the waterfall on for the first time!
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Although it
feels long winter only lasts for a few months and spring is just about within
our sights. Early flowering daffodils and crocus are popping up all over the
place and the fuzzy Magnolia flower buds are fattening up, readying themselves
for spring. It will be warm again soon. I hope. For a Scottish woman, I am not
that hardy.
As I am
coming to the end of this post, having just remarked how spring is around the
corner. The sleet has turned into snow and is now beginning to cover the ground
with a thin white later. Oh joy. Make sure you stay warm! Until next time!
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| Daffodils flowering in the Long Walk |
