‘A Refreshing Review’

The gardens are looking great at the moment, with colour around every corner, and so many things to discover. There are certain areas of the gardens that deserve a special mention this time of year. If you are visiting in the next few weeks make sure to see our Tropical Border, Jungle and Fern Garden that are all thriving. The Herbaceous borders, Poison Garden and the Seven Sisters are also well worth seeing.
I was stopped by a tourist this week, who announced that this was the best garden she had ever visited. She then spent several minutes explaining why. It turned out that she was a keen gardener and was extremely well travelled, which made it all the more meaningful. Sometimes we get caught up in the humdrum daily slog of managing and maintaining, and it takes a moment like this to take you outside your ‘bubble’ and remind you what you are actually doing it all for. We do have amazing gardens, and we get to share them with hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world, which makes it even more special! The gardens continue to develop and grow with each passing year, and we, as a team, get immense pleasure from keeping them looking good.
July really was a busy month, with the annual hedge cutting jobs taking up a good bit of time, along with the regular mowing, strimming, watering and of course the never-ending weeding. We have found time to start a couple of new projects though, and we recently opened up three new beds adjacent to the winter borders. These will form a nursery for our Vietnamese rhododendron collection. We will be planting them up soon with plants grown from wild collections made over the last 6 years and grown on in our walled garden. The beds will form a trial nursery where we can keep track of varieties growth and performance, and in some cases try to identify the more unusual varieties. It should prove extremely interesting.
We are in the process of summer pruning our fruit trees. Apples and pears can be pruned now to encourage fruit buds to form next year and also to maintain shape or train the tree into a shape. There are two periods for pruning, December/January and July/August. As a rule, winter pruning encourages growth of new shoots and summer pruning discourages growth. We also prune stone fruits now, tipping back and tying in new growth on our wall trained plums, peaches and nectarines. Stone fruits should only be pruned in early spring or midsummer as this reduces the chance of silver leaf disease. Fruit pruning is not very complicated if you follow a few basic rules, and there are many helpful sites on the internet with step-by-step guides.
A good tip that I can give this month is to plan your bulb order now. You can probably still remember how things looked in the spring. Make a few notes as to where you would like some extra colour in the garden, then select bulbs that suit. Too often bulbs end up as an impulse buy that get stuck in a corner and forgotten about. This can lead to some nice surprises but often leads to disappointment. Bulbs, like any other plant, have certain preferences and it pays to do a little research first. We have just completed our biggest ever order, so we are going to have a busy Autumn! Adam

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