December

Preparing the Walled Garden for Winter

“Morning Gardeners!”

Every Monday morning at about 7.30am, whatever the weather, the call goes out (well, a message from my iPhone) to the Garden volunteers to help with the week’s tasks.
It’s now early December, and we are in Winter dress, with a good selection of woolly hats and warm layers of clothing, as we prepare the Walled Garden for cold days ahead.

Mondays, when the Museum is closed to visitors, are good working days for us. We can make a mess and cheerfully leave our tools scattered about without fear of endangering anyone! On Wednesday mornings, our other garden session, we are much more careful.

There are some fourteen MIPWG volunteers who tend the Garden. A few of us were working there to prepare the site before the opening in October 2016; others have joined us during the five years since then. The volunteers come at times to suit them; some may manage an hour or two, while others stay longer. We’ve learned from one-another and now certain jobs have become a particular person’s task.
Autumn is over. The meadow is scythed; Sarah’s organic fruit and vegetables harvested; seeds collected and prepared for sale; dyes made from flower heads; Cleo’s borders have held their colour through all the seasons; and now, we prepare the Garden for Winter.
We shall leave architectural stalks and seed heads in the borders for the birds and resident mice to enjoy, until the frost turns all to mush. The robins have come to help us as we’ve been digging to reposition plants and to put in all the Spring bulbs – and they love us to bring mulch! We’ve seen blackbirds feasting on the crab apples, a gang of long-tailed tits on the teasels, bluetits on the sunflower seeds.

Already we’ve had a layer of ice on the dipping pond. Overnight the cold finished off Perilla Green in the herb border and Geoff’s dahlias collapsed so he’s taken the tubers home to overwinter. In their place, we’ve planted narcissus ‘Thalia’ and white hyacinths for the Spring. Everyone is busy. Marion has potted up the plants we’ve re-arranged or split, ready for future plant sales. The hedgerow is cut, the willow pollarded and the base of each orchard tree is being weeded and mulched.

Cleo has pruned the wisterias and the potentilla in the White Border is now trimmed; Sarah has planted broad beans at the pergola and yellow onion sets in the raised beds. We’ve tackled weeds along the pathway at the pergola, and rampant roots of Rudbeckia in the Bonkers Border. All of us have helped Cleo to plant new irises, carefully potted, grown on, labelled, and catalogued by Caroline. Oh, and we’ve dyed some garden string, to sell!

Now everyone must finish tidying up, weeding out ‘wandering’ plants, gathering up leaves, trimming the ferns… In the ‘hot’, Mediterranean Border, should we fleece the olive trees? Will the echiums survive the cold winter? Are the Magnolia Stellata bushes coming into bud too soon? When shall we check the snowdrops are labelled?
Then, throughout December and into the New Year, we can enjoy the shapes of the Box in the lower borders and the Rubus thibetanus, or ‘Ghost Bramble’ in the Stellata border with hardy white cyclamen beneath it.

At the Pavilion, the Cardoons still look amazing! Halfway along the Bonkers border, you’ll spot Salix gracilistyla ‘Mount Aso’ (pink pussy willow) and the steep bank is filled with rich reds from the cornus. In the White Border, through the cold, our very new Prunus ‘Autumnalis’ is flowering.

Soon, it’ll be snowdrop time again and a new season will be upon us!

Ann Taylor, December 2021