At the end of the East Lawn, traditionally known as the Croquet Lawn, I had demolished quite a long screen of derelict shrubs and I was now at the stage where I could fill it with new plants and plant a new Berberis verruculosa hedge around it. This would then eventually screen the old fruit cage area from the house, and in view of new proposals for the site, this was going to be important. Planning permission was being sought for a new archive building to replace the house next door which I had lived in for my first few months there. This would need to be incorporated into the site as a whole, whilst not impinging on the historic unit of the original buildings and garden. At this stage, the new border didn't look spectacular with its young plants, but the photos show the amount of work needed to produce the necessary compost to help it thrive. They do not show just how much large woody material I had had to cut down and grub out by hand in the clearance process, before chipping and shredding it and shovelling it onto the compost heap. But why would you want to see that anyway?
The state of the box hedge is evidence enough in itself of how the light had been obscured by the mess that had been allowed to flourish there -
Nice bluebells, though, backed up by a different view of the feature wall.
We had by now reached the 30th May, and in the previous month and a half a lot had been achieved. The rose beds were looking good, the orchard was starting to take the form I had envisaged, and I had dug and mostly planted the kitchen garden.
The rose beds were looking very tidy and healthy, with the bare-root plants dusted in mycorrhizal fungi before planting. The Verbenas that were to accompany them were still quite small, but the vine on the wall behind was now quite attractive at this early stage of the growing season, and the whole ensemble was looking so much healthier than it had done for years -
As for the orchard, it was early days yet. I had to wait for the bulb foliage to die down before I could set about the summer mowing as I planned it, so the squares of long grass were quite tall in which the bulbs were set. Later, I would cut these down to around six inches in height, to contrast with the shorter cut of the paths between, but for the time being they had to be allowed to grow -
The yellow area in the foreground was a patch of early bulbs which had now been cut back.
The kitchen garden was the part of the site that had seen the greatest progress, as I had been working on it amongst all the other regular maintenance tasks that a busy spring brings. All the beds were now dug, much of the sowing and planting had been done, wigwams had been erected for the beans, compost incorporated. The overall appearance, although still young, was as good as I had hoped -
The layout was now clear. As usual I was using little coir collars around the stems of the brassicas as organic prevention against cabbage root fly, with netting over them to keep the cabbage white butterflies from infesting them with caterpillars. There was a wigwam in the very centre of the roundel to give some height to the annual planting, and altogether it was a very pleasing space, and a vast improvement on the pointless rough grass square that used to be there -
In the picture above, the nearest beds had just recently been sown with root crops, such as carrots, parsnips and three different colours of beetroot, and the short rows across the beds can be seen. This was the whole purpose of the design - to be able to reach the crops from the paths without treading on the beds. To arrange the rows lengthwise would have been a nonsense. Keep this in mind for later.
From a different angle, the Pyracantha trained on the pierced wall on the North side of the kitchen garden can be seen in full flower. I enjoyed the very simple pruning process this involved. It required regular intervention, and I used to do a bit most weeks, but it involved no more than nipping off the new growths that threatened to obscure the flowers and ultimately the fruit. In this way the whole plant was kept pinched back to a permanent framework which showed off its assets to the best -
Close up, the Pyracantha looked like this -
I was still in the process of training in new growth to cover all the areas between the pierced brickwork. For this I would select new extension growth pointing in the right direction and tie it in, while ensuring that any other growth was pinched back and not allowed to grow beyond its allotted space.
Beyond that, on the East, or Croquet, Lawn, the borders that I had planted in my first winter were now swelling and looking attractive -
And naturally, the Mulberry on the other side of the lawn was splendid in full leaf, with the wigwams of the veg plot showing behind, and the shady underplantings now at a more mature size -
Of course, it doesn't end there, because gardens grow constantly, so anticipate more progress tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment