The newly refurbished Bothy is nearing completion; a home for gardening volunteers, office and shop for the produce to come
I worked with recent volunteer recruit, Peter (another Peter, this one with an Australian accent), in this week’s voluntary gardening at Blickling. Whilst the other Peter got on with some welding of the metal edging in the walled garden, ‘Aussie’ Peter and I double dug some stretches of soil where new fruit bushes will be planted and trained into espaliers along wires.
Not much evidence of our hard work, but these stretches of soil are now ready to be planted up with fruit trees
The rest of the volunteers did some more tidying of the borders in the Orangery Garden. To the crackle of welding torch and a digger (driven by ‘Dud’), which Mike had got in to dig over the surface of the top beds, Peter and I got into some serious ‘Yakka’, as Peter called it.
I gather this is an aboriginal term for ‘hard work’. Well it was. Not helped by a slight back ache I’d had for a few days (after overloading the firewood basket at home). Still, we soon got into a rhythm and entered ‘into the zone’- that wonderful mental state where the unconscious mind takes over and you do things on ‘autopilot’. But this didn’t stop us having a good natter, exchanging life and family backgrounds, football and so on.
Meanwhile Project Manager, Mike and Gardener Rob were trying to install some of the remaining metal edging alongside the northern border, which the other Peter duly helped cut up into the right lengths.
Some of Peter’s welding work, to provide strong corners to the metal path edging
Peter cutting some edging to length with Mike looking on
‘Dud’ at work with his digger, scraping back the top of the soil in the top beds; several lumps of concrete appeared…A couple of days earlier I’d attended the Blickling ‘Mid Winter Meeting’ at the local High School. This is an opportunity for staff and volunteers to hear from Heads of department about plans for the coming season (the House reopens on 5th March). I thoroughly enjoyed this event, which had some fun, unusual and inspiring talks to get us fired up for the year to come.
My wife has been sorting out our family photos and similar stuff, and came across this old postcard of Blickling among several I’d bought many years ago. I think it dates from 1907 – and includes a brief, cryptic message to a ‘Maude Meachen’ together with franked Edward VII stamp. It shows the rather fussy parterre before its major redesign in the 1930’s – see how small the Yew trees are, which today are the huge ‘acorns’ that are the major structural element in todays garden.
Further Information:
Blickling Hall website
Blickling Hall Facebook page
A 360 degree tour of Blickling Hall
Old School Gardener
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More forking and levelling this week in the walled garden. It was good exercise and inspired me to begin excavating my new wildlife pond at Old School Garden the day afterwards.
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This week’s gardening session focused on the avenues in the wilderness garden at Blickling. Gardener Ed led the volunteers to continue felling, gathering, shredding and stacking wood from the trees and overgrown shrubs alongside one of the routes radiating away from the House.
Ed set to work with an impressive chainsaw attachment on an extended pole which made cutting off offending boughs look pretty easy. He later used a more conventional chainsaw to reduce some overgrown hollies to stools, form which bushes will re-sprout.
I wrote about my last working session at Blickling a couple of days ago. I thought I’d add one further post about our visit to the place on Sunday, to see how staff and volunteers had dressed it for Christmas; especially the house. The theme- ‘Putting on the Glitz’, a return to the inter war years of stellar dinner parties, silverware and champagne cascades…
We were impressed (and smiled widely) as we did the normal tour route of the house… to see a wonderful rendition of a Lord Lothian Christmas complete with costumed staff (and celebrities), dinner menu and place cards and a wonderful range of floral displays. Here’s a gallery of some of the best bits…
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O.K. it’s me in there (captured by my wife on one of her walks)…and yes, it isn’t Ghostbusting (as my daughter suggested), but rather leaf blowing at Blickling this week!
Ed took me through the machine for the day – a very powerful petrol-powered back pack blower which was a bit on the heavy side, especially after a couple of hours! But, moving in a line, Peter, Ed (who had an even more powerful trolley blower) and I managed to get the leaves ready for Ed to bring round the tractor with a powerful vacuum cleaner attachment to suck up and shred the leaves ready for dumping on the leaf mould pile.
The run up to Christmas with Blickling ‘Putting on the Glitz’ is starting to come together, and we also helped lift furniture in the courtyard where a fire pit, lanterns and other features look set to create wonderful centre piece. Staff and volunteers have been out decorating the Acorn Yews in the Parterre Garden and the traditional avenue of illuminated Christmas Trees looks wonderful once more. This year there is even a ‘Christmas Tree’ alight on the island in the lake.
Yet more strimming this week in my latest session at Blickling!
Further Information:
Old School Garden 