So this week we were mainly lifting, dividing and replanting herbaceous plants in the Walled Garden at Blickling…
The ‘we’ constituted the two Peters and me, with Gardener Rob putting up support wires for the wall-trained fruit. Project Manager Mike had decided to reorganise the long border with herbaceous perennials into something a bit easier to manage and negotiate from the cut flower point of view. So lines of the same plants were the order of the day, rather than the clumps that had developed over the last year or two. The rest of the volunteers (there were only a handful this week), went over to the parterre for some weeding.
Digging all done…Mike resting on his spade, while Rob presses on with wiring up support for the wall fruit…
As we left for lunch, one of the other staff, Lizzie, was just starting up her seed sowing session aimed at children who are visiting the house and gardens (it was half term week of course). Some enthusiastic youngsters were more interested in filling some mini watering cans and pouring the contents over some nearby plants…oh well, good practice I suppose.
Lizzie gearing up for some seed sowing…
Over lunch, Gardener Rebecca’s young dog, Otto (who is kept in a cage in the bothy during work time) looked (and whined painfully) as he watched me devour a rather nice Russet apple- I gather he had already had one earlier in the day and had rather liked it!
Otto the dog is in there somewhere!
It was reasonably straightforward to lift and group plants before replanting them, some needing to be further divided. After the lifting out came the digging over of the border. This took us pretty much up to ‘home time’ and we conveniently left the clearing up to Mike, who had joined us after lunch to supervise and help with the replanting.
Regimenting the cut flowers…
Mike told me that the new cold frames were due to be delivered on 1st March, so I look forward to seeing them installed. Also, I gather we are due to see some new volunteers soon, so yet more hands to make light(er) work!
Further Information:
Blickling Hall website
Blickling Hall Facebook page
A 360 degree tour of Blickling Hall
Old School Gardener
Old School Garden 