September 2020

Below are several photographs taken by Marion Hearfield (Garden Volunteer and Cowle Trustee) last week in the Walled Garden. First, an from apology Marion - ‘my Kindle camera lens was grubby and I did not realise until part-way through taking photographs for you!’

The first photograph shows the results of a bulb-planting session in my back garden, where Alice came to help pot up 425 spring bulbs in five flavours. They will be on sale early in the new year.

But the walled garden had a week of drama in this season for wasps! Visitors to the Walled Garden in the past couple of weeks will have seen the warning signs - the willow tree that shades the plant holding bay was alarmingly full of wasps feeding on the honeydew created by huge aphids. We called in the expert and had reassuring words from Stratford Park contractor Mike McCrea that the Black Willow aphids would soon vanish now the wasps had arrived along with helpful ladybirds. Much more interesting to Mike was grey-brown damage on the willow's leaves - evidence of the smallest moths we have. So we keep the warning signs up in the expectation that the wasps will eventually clear off. Then another wasps nest was discovered in a flower-bed near the Summoner, so this time the Wasp Disposal Man came to deal with them.

In the rest of the garden we had new help on Monday from Sam, whom most of you will have seen behind the desk in Museum reception. Sam wants to learn a bit more about horticulture so it was only right that he started by weeding the pergola, then helped Susan to separate seeds from the old lavender cuttings. Geoff was very pleased with the compost that he had sieved from that covered box you saw earlier in the summer, and the gardeners started their autumn job of downsizing overgrown clumps (if any of you want some of that glorious schizostylis we already have some on the plant sale table, with many more now growing on for sale later). The hostas have taken a terrible slugging this year, so we have lifted them out of the beds and settled them into pots to make them less accessible. We hope next year's growth will look much better. The trimmed topiary has already put on new growth, the black willow up on the terrace has flourished, as have the tiny succulents tucked experimentally into very shallow dish of grit. And new tools are now in use - given to the walled gardeners by Lionel Walrond's nephew, delighted by the thought that Lionel's old-but-good spades, forks and hoes will continue to work for the museum

The garden is taking on its autumn colours and will continue to charm our visitors - one of whom this week had painted for the Secret Garden fundraising when the walled garden was still in the future. She was delighted to see the result.