Walled Garden Volunteers’ Blog Dec 2022/Jan 2023

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Finally, a weather- window and we had a Mad Monday at the very start of December to plant all the tulip bulbs. It was last- minute and needed a full- on effort from the gardening team! We cleared the pergola in preparation for the broad beans… but then the weather defeated us! Again!


Garden bank which is very wet, planting with some green colour, but mainly browns with some red

And so in January as we returned from the Christmas break, we were working ‘in reverse’, clearing what are now very soggy stalks… we couldn’t do the autumn cut- back because of rain … and then snow! We have lost so much gardening time! 



Two people standing beside a mainly empty dipping pond, with yellow hose trailing into the pond to refill it

We arrived in January to find extreme frosts have claimed a few victims; the Bay trees looked quite shocked, and our Myrtle, (Myrtus Communis) carefully nurtured by Nicola, is not happy at all!

The Dipping Pond was affected by the ice, and decided to empty itself…it’s happened before, but at the time of writing we are not sure whether there’s a more serious leak.

Then Marion came in to show us her Christmas Project: a beautiful woven ‘sampler’, made with wool which had been dyed by Ruth, using plant materials from the Walled Garden. Wonderful!

And the Witch -hazel (Hamamelis Orange Beauty) is in full bloom to cheer us up; the white stemmed Rubus cockburnianus on the stellata border is gleaming.

And… the snowdrops are coming up! We’re looking forward to you joining us on Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th January for our Stroud Snowdrop Celebration. Ruth will be our ‘artist in residence’ on the afternoon on Sat 28, showing how she paints with ‘inks’ made from the plants.