An Active October!

October was a busy month here in the gardens. We completed planting our new rhododendron bank alongside the river. It should provide a great spring show in years to come. The new rose bed has also gone in at the turnstiles. We took the opportunity to interplant the ‘Blarney Castle’ roses with some standard ‘Trumpeter’ which will hopefully complement them nicely. We also planted up our 80m long rose pergola with City of York (white) and Francoise Juranville (Pink).

Rose ‘Blarney Castle’ – Photo taken in the field this summer at Macnamara Roses.

We have started another new project, clearing the ivy and scrub from the woodland areas along the back avenue. We are trying to encourage natural regeneration in our native woodland areas and create some real ‘Irish’ woodland for future generations to enjoy. The herbaceous border is looking very tired now and we have begun cutting back, tidying and lifting tender plants such as dahlias, cannas and even verbena. We are not taking any chances this year after two hard winters! We have also moved in all of our rare varieties of tree ferns (dicksonia and cyathea) and fleeced the entire stock of Dicksonia antarctica that are staying outdoors. The weather has now turned mild again and they are probably sweating in their covers, but better safe than sorry. The baskets finally gave up this week after holding on for such a long time. We certainly got good value from them this year.

We received a fruit order this week of fig, medlar, cherry, mulberry, mixed loganberry and raspberry varieties and a triple fruit tree with peach, apricot and nectarine grafted onto a single rootstock. This is going on the wall in our glasshouse as a fan trained specimen, and should make good use of the space available. The raspberry varieties are to replace our old stock and we have opened new beds for them. We will continue to plant more varieties as there is always use for them. All the jam in our cafe this summer was from our own fruit!