We needed gardens befitting their setting, which was very beautiful. I did what I could that first summer, but I can't remember all of it. My overriding impression was of stumbling around tripping over things and taking tea and lunch in a dark stone shed with a member of seasonal staff with some unhygienic habits, which it would be unfair to describe here. This dismal lunch routine was a hangover from the separation between the two gardens, as one team ate in a dungeon, and the others sat round a table in relative comfort 200 yards up the road. I resolved that this was one thing I would change when I established my new team. We would all be taking our breaks in a place where daylight reached.
Typically for the type of charitable organisation for which I worked, there was no money available for anything, so when it came to replacing the team there was a financially-enforced gap between the expiry of the old seasonal contracts and the commencement of regular ones for the new staff. We were going to be without help from October through to the following spring, leaving just me and our one part-time gardener to look after both sites. For this reason, I had little choice but to continue the separation of the two gardens, with me working in the larger one, and leaving the other one in the hands of my colleague. However, through the winter I made a point of taking my breaks in the more comfortable facilities up the road in the interests of learning more and building up morale. I hope it worked.
Two things concerned me through that first winter on my own in two and a half acres of run-down garden. The first was to sort out the kitchen garden, and the second was to organise the greenhouse. Not necessarily in that order. We would not be able to make any progress in either garden unless I had a working facility under glass, so I set about a big tidy up job indoors. Remember that the greenhouse was being used as a tool store and general dumping-ground? Well, also crammed into it was a scruffy tomato plantation and a poor display section, presumably meant to operate as an ornamental feature. Here are the tomatoes -
And here are the indoor displays!
Bearing in mind that we had a string across the entrance to the glasshouse and no one was supposed to enter, it was hardly worth preserving a house of ornamentals, even supposing it had been a good one, if nobody was going to see it. I resolved to make better use of the space. Some of the plants would be useful for outdoor show in the summer, however, so I didn't necessarily want to dispose of them altogether. For instance, the Aeonium on the left of the picture, I remember using as a centrepiece to an annual border the following summer. There were also some perfectly salvageable cold-frames which were almost empty, hosting only a mass of weeds. These were to be incorporated into my plans to create a proper propagating facility. Also, I could not countenance going into my next open season with the disgraceful plant sales display I had witnessed on arrival. In future, all plants would be grown here, and transported the short distance up the road to be sold in the shop, where the revenue could be properly accounted for. Our current execrable sales area could then become a standing ground for growing plants on in the open, increasing the available space for producing quality plants. Sorted. In the end the greenhouse looked like this -
Forgive the badly-stored hose - it's a work in progress. Note the potting shed at the far end, now tidied, with room for three to work side by side, albeit quite intimately. From the other direction it looked like this. Note the Aeonium, kept for posterity -
The other end of the house also found a new purpose, growing new plants for use in the garden, both ornamentals and vegetables, as well as producing plants for sale -
By the following summer, our plant sales area had gone from this shameful shambles -
to this -
The cold frames had also been cleaned up, lined with ground cover membrane and put to productive use, having had their woodwork and glass restored -
Not bad, considering a fairly inauspicious start -
How could anybody have considered opening to the public like that? Well they did, but no more. Not on my watch.
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