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