Tag Archive: garden
via Gardeners’ World Magazine
Anemone by Andrea Mc Donagh
A few more clippings from a book I bought in a charity shop last summer ….
Celsius Curse:
Anything that survives the coldest, wettest summer since records began will perish during the mildest winter on record.
First Law of Arboriculture:
The magnificent mature tree you spotted in the National Trust garden and a similar sapling bought later at your local nursery at great expense take a hundred years to mature. no one told you this. Even if you did live to see it, the full-grown tree wouldn’t look the same in your garden.
Au Soleil:
The carefully selected, ideal situation chosen for the specimen, shade-loving shrub in November will get the full force of the sun all summer.
Law of Planters Can’t Be Choosers:
A gardener who is hunting for shrubs or trees looks first at the specimens suitable for his land, then at the substitutes on his list, and finally buys the one he can afford.
From : ‘Mrs. Murphy’s Laws of Gardening’ – Faith Hines (Temple House books, 1992)
Old School Gardener
My latest session of voluntary gardening at Blickling Hall focused on the Winter Garden and Dell once more- my there are a lot of leaves out there!
We volunteers continued to clear and tidy the Dell and Winter Garden. I had the pleasure of planting some wonderful pale yellow Hellebores to bulk up the flower show in the Winter Garden with Joan, my ‘planting partner’ for the day. I also got a few blisters from forking over the borders around the trees and shrubs, but it was well worth it- several visitors commented very positively.
I’m now away from Blickling for a couple of weeks, but I’m continuing my voluntary gardening at Gressenhall from next week, beginning the ‘pre opening’ tidy up.
Further information:
Blickling Hall website
Blickling Hall Facebook page
A 360 degree tour of Blickling Hall
Old School Gardener
Equipment-
Use the right tools, garden products and equipment to get the job done fast. If a task is easy to do, don’t leave it to become a problem. For occasional big tasks, consider hiring specialist tools or employing a contractor to do the job for you.
Further information:
Garden tools and equipment
BBC guide to buying tools
RHS guide to hiring contractors
Source: ‘Short Cuts to Great Gardens’ (Reader’s Digest 1999)
Old School Gardener
Here’s my latest collection of outside projects using wooden pallets and other recycled materials- some inspiring designs and superb craftsmanship, courtesy of 1001 pallets.
Old School Gardener
Guest article by Master Composter, Jill Wragg
The days are getting longer and it won’t be long before we are hard at work in our gardens again – time for a bit of planning and preparation…
The key to a good garden lies in the soil.
Providing the right soil conditions will produce good looking, healthy plants, resistant to pests & disease – and you can improve the structure & fertility of almost any soil by adding organic matter in the form of compost.
There are all sorts of myths and misconceptions about composting – many people think of a stinking, slimy heap covered in flies, or a pile of dried up old plants, which harbours rats and other pests. But compost is nature’s way of recycling; breaking down and reusing the organic materials for the plants we eat, or use for shelter and pleasure.
So, how do you make this wonderful compost stuff?
• find a suitable container, purpose built or out of scrap wood, old carpet or chicken wire and newspaper,
• place it on the soil or grass in a warm spot
• then fill it over time with a balanced mixture (about 50/50) of ‘greens’ and ‘browns’
A healthy compost bin needs nitrogen, carbon and oxygen. The ‘greens’ provide the nitrogen, and the ‘browns’ provide the carbon, and create spaces & air pockets in the bin for oxygen.
Garden waste is not the only thing that you can put in your compost bin.
At least 30% of most people’s household bin could be composted – helping to reduce the impact of global warming by cutting the amount of methane gas produced at landfill sites.
The ‘browns’ can include: egg boxes & toilet/kitchen roll tubes (not crushed, but left whole to provide space for oxygen), cereal boxes, corrugated cardboard packaging, newspaper, straw & hay, bedding from vegetarian pets, vacuum bag contents, tissues, paper towels & napkins, old natural fibre clothes (cut up your old woolly jumpers and cotton T shirts), feathers, egg shells, wood & paper ashes as well as your garden prunings, twigs, hedge clippings, pine needles and cones.
Your ‘greens’ can be: tea bags, grass cuttings, vegetable peelings, old flowers, fruit scraps, nettles, coffee grounds & filter paper, rhubarb leaves, annual weeds, pond algae & seaweed, spent bedding plants, comfrey leaves.
Then just leave it…
… for thousands of bacteria, fungi, insects and worms to make it their home, and turn it into rich crumbly compost – absolutely FREE! If you want to speed things up add a nitrogen rich ingredient such as farmyard manure (chicken / horse) or even human urine!
For more information see ‘handy hints and essential advice’ at www.homecomposting.org.uk
Current agricultural practices can be extremely damaging to soil, leading to erosion and exhaustion of valuable nutrients. We are all dependent on soil for our food. The United Nations estimates that a third of the world’s topsoil has already been degraded, and that if things don’t improve we may only have 60 years of healthy usable soil left! To raise awareness of the issues, 2015 has been declared ‘International Year of Soils’.
Do your bit for soil – start composting today!
Old School Gardener
The Dell, Blickling- scene of this week’s voluntary push..
I had a varied menu of gardening at Blicking this week…
I began with some ‘rescue pruning’of some old Espalier Pear trees on the orchard wall next to the Walled Garden. These hadn’t been pruned for some time and had put on a lot of thin growth (and some thicker, more rangy branches) in the past year or two. Working with Mike, Project Manager of the Walled Garden, we also tidied up the beds and paths near these old specimens and it now presents itself as ‘looked after’.
‘Before’- Espalier Pear in need of a haircut…
‘After’…
al tidied up.
Mike was telling me there’d been a problem with something nibbling the newly emerging tulip leaves in the Walled Garden raised beds- pheasants were the suspected culprits! A few sheets of ‘Enviromesh’ over these was now adding some protection. I mulched around these with some shreddings to create walkable paths and finished off with the same treatment around an old Mulberry Tree in the corner of the garden; this will keep weeds down and moisture in over the growing season to come.
‘Enviromesh’ keeping the Pheasants from the Tulips..
After lunch I joined the rest of the volunteers in ‘The Dell’, which lies next to the Winter Garden I’d been helping to tidy up in previous weeks. The Winter Garden was more or less finished (bar planting out some new Hellebores) and it looks splendid in the low afternoon sun, with the flowers of Witch Hazel, Daphne, Sarcococca, Snowdrops and Hellebores standing out against the cleared and ‘tickled’ dark soil- the fragrance of the Daphne is especially memorable.
Daphne- beautiul flowers, wonderful fragrance…
Witch Hazel (Hamamellis)
Blazing dogwoods
Snowdrops coming into their own…
Low afternoon sun in the Winter Garden…
The Dell is a sunken garden with different interest. Heavily shaded, and quite steeply sloping in places, it is home to a collection of ferns, evergreen shrubs and other such plants. We pruned some of the hollies back, tidied away on the slopes, pruning back dead stems and foliage, and of course removed- you guessed it- more leaves!
In The Dell…
Tree and other Ferns..just beginning to wake up
Further information:
Blickling Hall website
Blickling Hall Facebook page
A 360 degree tour of Blickling Hall
Old School Gardener
A few more clippings from a book I bought in a charity shop last summer ….
Altruism Truism:
A garden is an area of land devoted to growing fruit, flowers and vegetables, which in turn are dedicated to insect rearing.
corollaries;
1. The earth is alive to the sound of mastication.
2. Healthy plants breed healthy bugs.
Law of the vegetable patch:
A dose of insecticide whch would wipe out a medium-size town will do no more than temporarily stun a cabbage white. You can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool the caterpillars.
Law of Killing Generosity:
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but if it comes from a garden centre, do check for trojan aphids somewhere in its anatomy.
A Winning Aside:
In the fight between you, the world and blight, back the blight.
From : ‘Mrs. Murphy’s Laws of Gardening’ – Faith Hines (Temple House books, 1992)
Old School Gardener
Old School Garden 