Category: Heritage Gardens & gardening

Fully Glazed at Blickling

Filed under: Blickling Hall- rebirth of the Walled Garden, Community Gardening, Heritage Gardens & gardening — 2 Comments

07/03/2016

The pace is quickening in the Walled Garden at Blickling. Having missed a session, I returned to discover the second Glasshouse restored and looking wonderful, with work to install the cold frames under way.

Cold Frames under construction

The beuatifully restored Glasshouse…

…and inside- soon to be filled with seed trays?

I discovered that in my absence my fellow volunteers – ‘Aussie’ Pete and ‘Norfolk’ Pete – had been busy painting the metal posts that will carry wires for trained fruit.

Aussie Peter getting to grips with the painting

In my latest session Aussie P continued with this, whilst Norfolk P and I finished off double digging between these posts in preparation for the fruit bush planting.

Project Manager Mike was well into asembling the wires, including the straining bolts that enable them to be tensioned.

Fruti Fence well underway…

Mike wiring it up..

..straining bolts to tension

And in the new bothy, work was underway to fit a new kitchen. In here I also saw a wonderful carved oak panel that will sit atop the oak noticeboard installed near the entrance, installed some weeks ago.

Sneak preview…part of the carved oak rail to be set atop the new noticeboard

A new kitchen for the new bothy

Whilst we three set to in the walled garden the remaining volunteers went about cutting back and tidying the borders around the moat to the house, which contain a bank of perennial Fuchsias.

After lunch it was a case of ‘all hands to the wheel’.

As the house was due to open in a couple of days a big effort was needed to clear away the excavations that have been underway to install the Lake Source Heat system I reported on a few weeks ago.

Along with a digger, tractor and trailer, which were used to remove some sloppy spoil, we loaded barrows and filled in a trench with crushed concrete, which was later smoothed nad compacted before having gravel spread to restore the pathway near the House.

Intense activity in a confined space…restoriung a path near the house

Serious ‘Yakka’ once more, but a satisfying bit of work as the gardening staff and volunteers pulled together amidst the usual banter….

Further Information:

Blickling Hall website

Blickling Hall Facebook page

A 360 degree tour of Blickling Hall

Old School Gardener

Tags: blickling, bothy, digger, double digging, espalier, fruit trees, garden, norfolk, painting posts, path restoration, straining bolts, volunteers, walled garden, winter, wires, yakka

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Double Digging at Blickling

Filed under: Blickling Hall- rebirth of the Walled Garden, Community Gardening, Heritage Gardens & gardening — Leave a comment

25/02/2016

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 wrok, but these stretches of soil are now ready to be planted up with fruit trees

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.