The Walled Garden has become a Hedgehog Haven

The Walled Garden has become 'hedgehog haven' in the most inconvenient places for the volunteer gardeners (but we are happy!)! Three of our hedgehogs have hibernated in flower beds and, with lots of clearing still to do and cold weather forecast, this week we hurried to provide a quick but solid house round each of them, for their sakes and for ours.

During November the vegetable garden continued to produce impressive endives (a leaf vegetable belonging to the genus Cichorium), a local cider-maker was delighted to take our surplus apples, and the damp soil around the back of the dipping pond is the new home for more rhubarb (pictured).

Geoff lifted the dahlias at the end of November so we have filled the raised bed with pots of the spring bulbs we kept from last year, and with sisyrinchiums lifted from the flower beds and potted up for sale next year.

The extended growing season has meant several changes to our plans, with many plants flowering long after they should have finished, and we are only now able to plant the tulips that will give another spectacular show next spring. And the mulch has just arrived so we hope to get it spread about before the cold weather settles in. We have also done a thorough tidying of the front courtyard flower beds and, behind the beech hedge, we are transforming the shade garden.

A date for your diary: the final weekend of January 2023 is our ‘Snowdrop Celebration’. There will snowdrops on sale from Avon Bulbs, a talk in Gallery 2 of the museum on the theme of spring gardens, a pop up café, and our special collection of snowdrops representing the story of the Giant Snowdrop Company. Look out for more details on the Museum website.

Other photographs of our work and the borders of the garden and courtyard: