To Walter de Grasse

Dear Walter,

Well, old friend I have to begin this letter with many congratulations on the success of your eldest, Andre, at Rio!! Three medals for Canada (2 bronze, one silver) is a fantastic achievement that you and Ferdy Lise must be very proud of. Especially as you also are no stranger to Olympic glory yourself, getting that gold for Pigeon Racing back at the 1948 games. Please pass on our congratulations and very best wishes to Andre. (You may have noticed that I retained the hanging baskets as the headline photo in this post; red and white to celebrate Canada’s and your son’s wonderful achievement.)

Andre De Grasse- known to his friends as ‘Please’, as in ‘Please don’t walk Andre de Grasse’

Well, after many late nights watching the action from Rio, and of course very proud of Team GB’s amazing achievements (we had the Union Jacks flying over the hanging baskets during the games), the gardening has been rather low-key during August. Some selective weeding, grass cutting and watering have been the main tasks, leaving time to sit and enjoy the warm weather. I did spend about 4 hours the other day trimming back all the hedges. Much tidier, but I have the cuttings to clear, not one of my favourite jobs.

Winter Jasmine…

…and plenty of other hedges trimmed back

On the ornamental side the pond garden is filling up very well with a nice range of floral and foliage- and wildlife, including frogs and dragon flies. I’m also rather pleased with a couple of Cannas that are flowering superbly at present.

In the Kitchen Garden the bounty continues, though the tomatoes have pretty well finished. cucumbers and peppers are coming thick and fast from the greenhouse, and the salad bar is flourishing. We also have plenty of runner beans, courgettes and carrots. Cauliflower (if I can stop the caterpillars) red cabbage, chard, more carrots, parsnips and summer squash are on the way. The winter leeks are in and doing well, and there’s a good crop of apples and pears on the way from the orchard as well as the ‘super columns’ in the kitchen garden (some of these are so laden with fruit they are bending over- I think I’ll have to put some mopre substantial supports in over the close season). Deborah has also bottled up around a dozen beetroot which should keep her going for a few months…

Son-in-Law Diego has continued to be really helpful in the garden, giving the new shed another coat of ‘Creocote’ and helping me clear up after cutting the hedges back. I’m pleased to report that both he and our daughter Madeleine have secured jobs in or near to Cambridge and we heard the other day that they have a nice little terraced house near the centre of Newmarket to move into in the next week or two, so soon we’ll be helping them with their garden!

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It’s a few days until our first ‘Haveringland Groundforce Day’- our attempt to get to grips with the churchyard over the fields from us, in order to manage it into a wildlife paradise with mown paths and spaces to sit and reflect. I’m hopeful that we’ll get enough support and equipment to do a good job strimming and raking off, weeding, pruning back ivy and cutting back saplings and more mature trees. It will also hopefully set out a scene for the Harvest Festival event being held there on 11th September, which will feature a vintage tractor run from nearby Cawston, children’s activities, standing steam engines, refreshments and an informal service with music supplied by the Aylsham Town Band. We’re looking forward to seeing you and Ferdy here for the weekend, which will also see the Norfolk Churches Trust cycle ride visiting the church.

The view to St. Peter’s…

So,a warm, peaceful and enjoyable time in then garden this month but I’m already lining up some major things for September; building a new potting shed, weeding and bulb planting, among other things…hopefully a ‘gold medal’ performance!

Old School Gardener

To Walter Degrasse

Dear Walter,

Summer finally arrived! It’s been a warm few weeks after a cloudy and wet June.  Wa + We= G (where Wa is warmth, We is Wetness and G is growth) just about sums it up.

The growth has on the whole been a victory for wanted plants rather than weeds, though I’ve still been ‘speed weeding’ in the more prominent areas of the garden- mainly bindweed.

It’s been a month of change; our daughter and her husband have returned from living in Portugal and are currently living with us pending settling jobs and a permanent place to live. It’s great having them around, and our son-in-law, Diego has been especially helpful in the garden and more generally; he’s done a great job repainting a lot of the woodwork in the kitchen garden and helping tidy things up. They also brought their two cats with them and one of the most important jobs earlier in the month was finishing off their new home- the ‘Cat Cave’.

The ‘Cat Cave’…

…and Jack(r) and Jill (l)

At this time of year many of the floral treats of high summer are coming into their own, so here’s a pictorial round up of Old School Garden today…

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After the first flush of produce from the kitchen garden, things have slowed a little, though we have a good store of potatoes, onions and garlic. The strawberries were very disappointing, a combination of poor weather and the early shoots being nibbled by deer. We now have a rather untidy bed with corn growing out of the straw I put round the strawberry plants- a job next week will be removing this and perhaps using some of the spare ground for planting out leeks or carrots.We’ve had and continue to get a good supply of tomatoes, and other things are well on the way, such as some newly planted leeks and red cabbage…

Another important achievement has been finishing off the path next to the ‘Fruit Fence’; I decided to board the edges and cover it with landscape fabric and gravel. It certainly tidies that area up. I’m now starting to contemplate the next big thing, my DIY shed. I’ll turn my attention in the coming weeks to finalising the design and then getting hold of the timber for its framework.

You may recall a couple of years ago I was involved in tidy up at the local churchyard, and promised the then vicar that I’d produce a Management Plan for this? Well, two years on and with a new vicar in place, who’s keen to get the church up and running as a community venue as well as a place of religion, we are working together to set up a ‘Friends’ Group, part of whose role will be to look after the churchyard. I’ve drafted a management plan for this (see the visual plan below), which features a mix of close mown paths and areas of recent burial, with blocks of ‘meadow’ like habitat. The local Wildlife Trust is interested in helping us and have already completed a survey of the churchyard, which has a good range of wild flowers

July is also a good time to take semi-ripe cuttings, so I’ve taken around 60 pieces from the lavender in the front garden  (‘Imperial Gem’) with a view to replacing this in a couple of years time, as the plants are now getting rather woody.

I’ve also recently purchased a few ‘bargain’ plants to replace the early flowering Sweet Williams (having collected seed from them) and Violas.

The pond garden continues to fill out and I was pleased to spot a Frog and Dragon Fly there the other day and the host of insects continues to expand. The Water Lily I thought had died off, appears to have revived (the warmer weather is probably the key).

Oh, and I also got some free plants courtesy of Blickling the other day, some Ricinus communis. Though a bit ‘leggy’ they have fitted into my exotic front circular bed well, and having added some Scabious (‘Nana’) and Marigolds, as well as a Tithonia, I’m looking forward to this bed producing a bold ‘splodge’ of vibrant colour in the next month or two.

I hope that your own garden is looking splendid and that your new gardener is continuing to impress you with her skills and ideas. she certainly sounds to have been a find and with my recent experience of extra help, makes me think about getting in some extra help here…especially with the prospect fo so much weeding to be done in the autumn…I rather like the idea of being a ‘Head Gardener’!

Old School Gardener

To Walter Degrasse

Dear Walter,

I’m feeling pleased. After some despondency at how the ‘garden has got away from me’ this year, I’m finally getting a grip of things…I think. I guess you’ve had lots of rain and not very high temperatures in June, like us? Well the rain has certainly led to luscious growth just about everywhere.

I think my more positive outlook is partly down to being a little creative in Old School Garden. In my new Pond Garden – where the planting is starting to take hold very nicely- I’ve added some touches of ‘artwork’ which I hope add to the rustic, slightly oriental feel of this sunken space, and have also added more planting- e.g. some clumps of Camomile in between the flag stones (added to the Thyme I put in last month) , plus some plants I purchased down in Devon at the Tavistock Garden Festival (more on that experience in a later post).

The artwork consists of some red-painted items, plus a ‘sheaf’ of Cornus stalks, which were red when cut (the variety is ‘Sibirica’), but have turned jet black as they dry out. I hope these new additions will pick up the red paint on the bench and will also link to some red and black planting in one corner. The red items are all recycled; an old metal bed head (found in the garden) similar to those I’ve painted black and placed above the entrances to the Courtyard, a broken metal wheel that looks like it might have come off of a hen house (also found in the garden), and some curtain poles and finials which I’ve collected from various places over the years. Here they are- what do you think?

Elsewhere in the other ornamental parts of the garden I’ve resorted to some more ‘speed weeding’ along with cutting the edges fo the lawns- it’s always surprising how much better the borders look after this treatment. Fortunately I’ve been able to catch major weeds before they flower and set seed. On a more positive note the Philadelphus (‘Belle Etoile’) I grew from a cutting I took at Peckover House in Wisbech when I was working there has produced a lovely shower of white flowers.

Philadelphus ‘Belle Etoile’

The main borders have also filled out and crowded out many, if not all of the weeds. I’ve also put out my hanging baskets on the front porch (a red, white and black colour theme), and these are looking good. In the same area, you remember I reported our plan to have the old paint removed from the two storey end of the house? Well it’s been done and the result is excellent, tying the old flintwork once more into the rest of the house. Below there’s a picture of the company during the work, which involved using a fine glass to blast off the paint. Some of the mortar has come away, but it should be possible to repair this with an appropriate mixture of lime and sand…though matching in the colour of the new with the old mortar will be tricky. I’ve started to set out the border in front of this wall, albeit ona temporary basis for now-a mixture of marigolds and Echeveria will provide some summer interest, whilst some English Lavender I recently bought and have potted on, will provide the long-term planting here; hopefully we’ll have a bushy, fragrant low hedge right under the bedroom windows!

Flintwork having the paint removed…

and afterwards, with a temporary border.

I’ve also been creative in the Kitchen Garden where having reorientated the compost area, I’ve now refurbished the bins so that I have removable slats on the fronts, which should make turning and removal a lot easier. I’ve also begun to put in some proper steps to give access to the Fruit Screen to the rear of the garden, where, incidentally, the Sweet Williams I sowed en masse last year are starting to put on a glorious show- as are those plants I left in from last year! These steps will lead up toa new path which I think will be pea shingle on a landscape membrane. I may try out using the large supply of old roofing tiles I have available as edging to this.

New sleeper steps up to what will be a new path

The (nearly) refurbished compost bins..now with sliding slats that will make access so much easier

We’ve had our first New Potatoes- the variety ‘Rocket’. Though delicious I’ve been a little disappointed with the productivity so far, possibly down to later than usual planting and not wonderfully warm weather. I’ve also been enjoying some broad beans. Though Wimbledon is traditionally the time for strawberries, the crop to date is disappointing in fact I haven’t yet picked one! As I mentioned in an earlier letter, the Deer have been in and nibbled off the tender new growth, which seems to have reduced drastically the number of flowers, and again the weather hasn’t been our side either. The first raspberries are ready to pick and I plan to use these in a dessert on Friday, when we have some friends over for dinner.

Second early potatoes ‘Charlotte’

Not very encouraging strawberries

Calabrese and Cauliflower getting on

onions laying out for drying..if it ever stops raining!

some good looking apples coming along on ‘super columns’

Sweet Willians sown from last year’s seed- and not thinned, but still coming good

Tomatoes are also just about coming forward, though we could do with some heat to ripen these off, the peppers and cucumber have also finally gone into the greenhouse and I can see some cucumbers starting to form.

Good sized tomatoes…come on, ripen!

Other things well on the way include Calabrese, Cauliflower, Garlic, Onions, Shallots and of course the rest of the early potatoes (‘Charlotte’ my favourite will follow on from the first earlies) . I’ve put in a few squashes, having cleared away the Purple Sprouting Broccoli from last year’s sowing, and also four courgettes, a range of different runner beans and some carrots, parsnips and beetroot. I have some leeks on the way for planting out in a couple of weeks and some red cabbages too.

The other areas where I’ve put in some time are the Terrace and courtyard and connecting pathways, where the pointing was in a serious state of disrepair. I’m pleased with the repointing, though all the wet weather we’ve had finally took its toll on two wooden planters I’d made out of decking and other wood. The wood finally collapsed, rotten and I’ve therefore had a rearrangement of the layout in the courtyard, still trying to retain a sense of enclosure around the table and chairs the Hostas are into their stride here and make a wonderful display- what do you think of the new layout?

Pelargonium ‘thatre’ about to flower…

New layout- minus soem rotten wooden planters..

Hostas loving the wet weather…

repointing completed in the courtyard

On the propagation front I’m pleased with the results of my seed sowing so far, including an interesting mix of marginal plants sourced from the RHS and other places; I’m looking forward to a super display of Candelabra Primula, amongst others, in due course.

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So, hopefully you can see I’ve been busy! Today I’ll be cutting the grass (on a dryish day). Oh and that’s something else I’ve done- used our inherited Scarifier to rake out dead material and moss from the more formal lawn areas and afterwards fed the grass. This is starting to look lusher that it has for a long time- witness the pictures below. Well, old friend, time to be off to begin the day’s work…hopefully we’ll see you and Ferdy Lise soon!

Old School Gardener