My muscles were decidedly stiff after being away from gardening for a couple of weeks. But my latest session of volunteer gardening at Blickling was very enjoyable. The team was on good form and we had lots of news to share, not least that two of the volunteers had just secured jobs, one starting that very afternoon and the other to take up a role as an Assistant Gardener at Blickling!
My session began on the edge of the car park backing the Walled Garden, where earlier in the year I’d helped Project Manager Mike prune some wall fruit and tidy up a rather messy edge where weeds had forced their way through tarmac and concrete to ‘adorn’ the old red brick walls. It was a case of ‘more of the same’ a few months on, and I was pleased with the results…see picture below.
So, after an hour here it was back to the walled garden proper with the rest fo the team to wed and mulch one of the new beds brought into cultivation, this one containing a wide range of flowers. Again, a pleasing result after a couple of hours…
Weeding nearly done…
After mulching with some ‘black gold’…
This bed is at the ‘frontier’ of the newly cultivated areas in the walled garden, which I suppose must now be about a quarter in productive use. So still a long way to go in achieving the vision of a rejuvenated garden, but some steady progress. I was especially pleased to see that the first lengths of metal path edging had gone in, which start to ‘shape up’ the whole plot.
Metal edging starting to define the beds in the Walled Garden
And the pumpkins and squashes I helped to plant out have gone to town, providing lush cover to a large area of the garden….
I took some time to look around the main area of cultivation in the Walled Garden and I must say, all credit to Mike and the team as the rows of vegetables and cut flowers look great. And it seems the rustic supports that Peter and I put up are doing their job supporting a promising crop of runner beans and sweet- smelling sweet peas….
I’ve never seen such beautful onions!
runner beans on the long supports
Sweet peas on the ‘wigwams’
Mulberries now in fruit
I couldn’t help notice that the formal gardens – the parterres and double borders- were also full of summer colour; the reds, oranges and yellows of the double borders (including some impressive dahlias I helped to plant out) looking particularly impressive….
Another two week break from Blickling, and this week’s session was hot, hot, hot!
Two weeks on and I was finally back in the Walled Garden at Blickling this week. 
Having a few minutes to spare I planted a few Basil and Lettuce plants near the front of the main cultivated strip of the Walled Garden, which all in all is starting to look very good, as the various vegetables and flowers are bulking out and putting on colour.
Yesterday’s session at Blickling was spent planting 6 million Penstemons ( I exaggerate)…
I think it must be three weeks since I was last at Blickling. I got a chance to look around at the end of my working session and there were several highlights I hadn’t seen before, most notably the Azaleas round the Temple, the wall-trained Wisterias, the masses of Forget-me-Nots and Honesty in the Dell and some of the colour combinations in the double borders; especially the Tulip ‘Queen of Night’ and the black foliage of Mongo Grass and Black Elders. 
Old School Garden 