Sunshine and rain brought a flush of growth (and an award!)

On Saturday 25th June 2pm-4pm we are inviting you to join the gardeners for afternoon tea as part of Wild Stroud’s Open Gardens Weekend. This is a rare chance to drop in and meet some of them, hear about how the garden came into being, ask questions, share ideas and chat about its guiding principles. There will also be tea and cake and plants for sale. Free, donations very welcome.

Sunshine and rain brought a flush of growth everywhere in the walled garden and May has been a busy month for the Award-winning volunteers.

The irises are glorious, the white bed looks stunning, plants sales have overtaken all our records to date.

Sarah's pergola planting shows just how much you can grow in a tiny strip with good manure and compost and we have tasted the first radishes (hot!).

Close-up of auricula

The auricula theatre has starred several beautiful varieties grown at home by the gardeners and in the courtyard we have planted the big pots to celebrate the Jubilee. Underneath all of this glory we have been weeding and tidying, potting on seedlings and rootlings, and adding new plants for yet more pleasure.

We were delighted to have our hard work acknowledged by the Town Council and celebrated, briefly, before getting on with more weeding.

Toasting the Community Award

Auricula Display

Pea plant growing in vegetable bed

View across the bonkers border!

Irises in the walled garden

Close-up of iris

Jubilee planted pots in museum courtyard

The Mediterranean (hot) border

Produce at the pergola - peas, broad beans

The plant sales table

A Peony

The White border

Following a busy Easter period the volunteers were back in the Garden...

It was a busy Easter Holiday in the Garden with plenty of small visitors hunting Easter  eggs, making Easter baskets and searching for wildlife in a series of exciting Museum workshops. 

Blossom on mature apple tree

Now, after the shock of late frosts then sunshine but no rain, the Garden volunteers were back on the last Monday of April with plenty to do! 

Here we all are on a typical gardening day. Gardeners come in for a few hours, or for the day, bringing lunch. Everyone checks out their special patch then settles down to tasks. On this particular Monday, it’s serious weeding and thorough watering , looking forward to catching up with news ( and maybe some cake) over tea- break. 

Volunteers enjoying a rest and a hot drink

Weeding in the hot border

Geoff unpacked and set up our new wood chipping machine and gave it a good trial; the shreddings are going straight into our compost bin, mixed with leaves and stems (no roots or seeds!) , grass mowings, and a little  torn-up cardboard.

Sharpening Secateurs

Sarah, having checked all her veg and fixed pet portraits on to her new idea for this year, the Pet Salad Bar,  settled down to a bit of secateur -sharpening. 

The potting area

Marion - who had frantically been keeping the plant sales tables stocked up during the holiday (with thanks to Caroline too, who has been nurturing cuttings and seedlings offshore in her own garden) - has a lot of potting up to do to keep ahead of sales.

We are so pleased that the money we raise is enough to pay for any new plants that go in and the occasional piece of equipment and organic manure; it's good to know the garden is self-supporting. 

We, the Garden volunteers, do all try to take a minute or three to just stand and look, too; we are not always on our knees!  Working in this garden and being involved in its evolution is a delight.  Right now,  the blossom is breath-taking, Spring has arrived in  the meadow, the tulips are  stunning, the auricula theatre has just opened its 2022 show, and the irises - oh yes,  the irises!  - will be up within the next few weeks and then the garden will astonish everyone all over again! 

Early May, and the walled garden is starting to burst into bloom. Or burst into radishes - we picked the first ones on Monday! The front of house wisteria echoes the blue of the irises below, and our wonderful iris collection is starting to appear in the walled garden. Visit us any time in the next few weeks for a breath-taking display…

Front of Mansion

Showing Iris bed and Wisteria

Blue Wisteria

Blue Wisteria on the front of the museum

White Wisteria

White Wisteria in the walled garden

Orange Geums

Orange geums in the walled garden

Early Irises

Irises in the walled garden

Yellow Iris

Brown Iris

Blue Irises

A mass of blue irises in the walled garden

Radishes

The first crop of radishes from the walled garden

View across garden beds with museum in background

A vegetable plot for pets - Spring update!

So - the enticing sunshine is back and some welcome dryness, but a tough start to spring with these cold winds. It has slowed things in the vegetable garden a little.

One of the raised beds has been planted up with fresh compost from our heaps with a dash of manure and is fully devoted to potatoes this year - an organic seed variety called Sunset. We planted on an east-west axis so don’t be surprised by the odd lines. Due to the variable weather and threat of frost we have put back our plastic cover for now.

Another of our raised beds has been turned over to a new venture this year - a pet salad bar. We are growing seeds specifically and scientifically designed for certain pets [in a nutritional sense]. We have rows for Tortoises, Hamsters, Cats, Dogs and Rabbits. If they grow well we are hoping to offer a pick your own salad bar for children to take home to their pets. Watch this space.  We are looking for a portrait of a Hamster to make up the visual signs for this bed. Please send a good headshot to Sarah. Sorry - all other portraits are already filled.

 Meanwhile onions and garlic are growing happily in a third bed, enjoying the frosts it would seem.

We have fully planted up the broad beans on the orchard side of the pergola tunnel (pictured) and some peas on the path side. They should give us some early crops and put nitrogen into the soil for us, a double bonus.

A blueberry has made it to the garden- sourced from a blueberry farm in Dorset who are among the first to grow blueberries in the UK commercially so we have high hopes. It certainly looks like a fine specimen and has been given a royal bed in between the apricots [both looking very fine too]. Ideally we need more than one. Although this variety is better at being self fertile, they are better with more than one so maybe we can spot places elsewhere that could receive one next year. This spot is actually quite mossy underfoot as well as sunny, so we are hoping it will appreciate the damp.

 The final bed will be sown this week with salad and maybe a few early carrots and beetroot, yum. We will of course sow some more landcress to replace the very popular and enduring row we had until last week [it had finally decided to run to seed having seemed indestructible].

 I am investigating the idea of having a wormery to complete our compost production area and generate some valuable worm casts for the potting up department. The Compost area has really gotten into its stride this last year under the careful eye of Geoff and we are creating a good temperature in the beds and, as a consequence, a healthy amount of good quality dark compost from our garden waste - locking in carbon and saving on trips to the tip. From our trial last year using it in the dahlia bed, no weed seeds emerged. A triumph!

It begins to become the heart and engine house of the garden. A way for us to feed the soil and add valuable structure.

January/February

January frosts

We are a hardy bunch of gardeners but the sunshine has warmed us despite the frost! The garden beds look lovely in the sunshine.

Photographs show: Frosty lawn; Frosty grasses; Frosty euphorbia; Frosty witch hazel

Snowdrop weekend

Our Snowdrop Weekend at the end of January was a great success - on the Saturday morning we arrived to find people queueing at the Courtyard gate before the Museum opened. All weekend was busy with visitors admiring our Giant Snowdrop Company displays and buying stock for their own gardens from the Avon Bulbs stall. Galanthophile guests compared varieties and gave advice and encouragement to our own gardeners.

Photograph: Snowdrop weekend

February groundwork

The Storm Warning gave us time to move the terracotta pots of snowdrops from the auricula theatre, thank goodness. All the gardeners came in on the Monday after the storms, prepared for the worst, but in fact very little damage had been done inside the walled garden. So we got on with our spring-cleaning, tidying and weeding and took delight in the new flowers. With the lower risk of hard freezing we also refilled the water butts around the volunteer shed.

Photographs: Hellebores; Purple bed; water butts

Compost success

Geoff emptied the oldest of our three compost bins - what lovely, dark, organic compost it is! We celebrated that - and his recovery of three pairs of secateurs - with a hot drink, tucked away out of the wind.

Photographs: Compost bin; Compost ‘finds’!; Compost treasure; Compost celebrations

Pergola Prep

Sarah trimmed the fruit bushes and canes and tied them in to the pergola, using colour-matched hand-dyed MiP Gardening string.

Photograph: Colour match string

The long beds of the pergola work very hard for us. In preparation for this year's planting we spread six bags of Soil Association manure and topped it with some of our home-made and sifted compost. Meanwhile, Sue and Ruth untangled our rhubarb from the roots of the wisteria and replanted it with a dollop of manure and compost along the top steps.

Photograph: Pergola bed; Rhubarb

December extra!

Visitors to the Walled Garden watched our Monster pumpkin grow over the summer, and then be a highlight of our Halloween festivities - its final weight was 17kg. By mid-December it was ripe enough to eat and gardener volunteer Penny donned surgical mask and gloves to perform the necessary surgery. Some of the chunks went home with volunteers but more than half were turned into soup for the Long Table, by gardener volunteer Ruth. We saved the seeds, of course.

Marion H.

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

October

Give Sarah three pallets and look what she does! An experiment, but a very handy addition to the working corner of the garden.

The Giant Pumpkin planted on the edge of the lawn in the summer is now impressively large.

Around the garden we have been weeding: Sue and Penny cleared the ground along the hedge, where the snowdrops will come through in late winter, and everyone helped to clear the meadow.

It was time to harvest all of our weird and wonderful Italian squashes but, unhappily for us, some  of them had disappeared.

Fortunately Sarah had been growing spares  at home so we shall still have a good display. By the end of the morning (allowing for Marion to dash home to get her bathroom scales to weigh the larger specimens!) we had a very good selection. The white gourds grown by Sarah at home ( which are understandably inedible) , look more like something out of Dan Dare! Sarah has now taken them all of the pumpkins and squashes home to ‘cure’ before they go to be admired on display on the auricula theatre next to the Pavilion .

The sunflowers along the pergola grew and grew and grew, and looked wonderful in the sunshine, as did the borders, with glorious colours .

Marion H

August

The walled garden changes continuously, and here are some photographs from August. The pumpkin patch has spread quickly this summer. Sarah, determined to grow a monster, ruthlessly sacrifices smaller fruits. Visiting children tell us quietly that pumpkins should be orange, not yellow, but they enjoy seeing how we water it. The smaller squashes on the pergola, now lazing in their knitted hammocks, have been joined by a knitted stowaway.

Queen Victoria's Myrtle, in its pot by the shed, is in flower, as is the white crinum, which we are introducing in the white bed, hoping it will settle and spread . The Bonkers bed glows in the sunshine, as do our sunflowers, and the shady corner is lit by a lovely white hydrangea.

Up in the sunshine the Mediterranean bed flourishes without any additional watering - look at those cardoons! and Geoff's dahlia bed has exceeded our, and his, expectations, helped by our own , walled garden compost.

We are starting to harvest produce from the vegetable garden - Sarah's choice of vegetables now scrambling up the pergola was influenced by her feasting on Italian novels last winter (!) and this week's harvest looks so tempting. The potatoes are packed in pockets made from SNJ pages, and everything on these shelves can with confidence be labelled Zero Air Miles. Come and buy some to take home! They are fresh, and delicious.

July

The garden volunteers continue to get ready for the Museum's re-opening and it has been a delight to be able to talk to garden visitors. Geoff has cut the beech hedge in the courtyard and the heavy rain then sunshine of the past month has resulted in the need for a lot of weeding. We are now taking great care not to put seed heads or roots into our compost bins, in our bid to make weed-free, totally useable compost for the Garden.

The Longfield Trust has made a beautiful memorial in the shape of 1,000 purple butterflies. You may have seen them in Gloucester Cathedral, or on Points West. The butterflies were in the Walled Garden until 24th July and were a joy.

Our organic vegetable grower Sarah asked for some plant supports for her climbing Cucamelons, now planted in the raised beds in the vegetable garden. If you don't know what a Cucamelon is, come and look! The plants are still rather small at the moment, though! Marion wrestled with some of our own bamboo and some left-over willow to make ‘climbing frames’ for the plants.

And you won’t fail to miss the giant pumpkin plant on the lawn - we are trying to produce a huge pumpkin for the autumn. 

Blooming May!

What a difference a month makes. The hunkered-down flower beds responded to the warmth of the past month and burst out with an exuberant display that we know will continue all summer. Here is a selection of photographs taken in the past week.

The two plant sales tables (top and bottom of the garden) are now stocked full so do come and see what is happening and take some of our garden home with you. You can book a visit here.

The auricula theatre blew down in one of the spring gales, taking with it all the terracotta pots (smash!). We repaired and reinforced it and the theatre now shows off our summer-time display of succulents (and a few repurposed terracotta pieces). The second half of our photographic tour takes you behind the scenes - to some very murky places! Everyone has been working hard, as usual, though in sunhats this week rather than weatherproofs - we are definitely all-weather volunteers.

Geoff's new dahlia bed was filled with our own compost, which was an impressive consequence of careful management. For the past few months we have been soaking roots, weeds in trugs hidden behind the compost bins. This is an experiment devised by our organic gardener Sarah. Recently she decanted the Weed Soup, as she has dubbed it, and poured the resulting juice on to the compost heap. Thick, black, smelly, and full of goodness. Sarah's advice has transformed the way we work and the garden's organic fruit and veg will be on sale as the summer progresses.

Happy Gardening, from the Walled Garden Volunteers

Spring Jobs

Here are some photos from the Walled Garden this past month, with a commentary from Ann:

25 March The first iris! The cardoons are on their way and spring bulbs are delighting us all. The ‘orange‘ compost bin is ‘cooked’ and we have made some fantastic compost following Sarah’s rules. Our discipline in chopping everything up and not putting in seed heads or roots of pernicious weeds is starting to yield results. Geoff is using a lot of the new compost for his dahlia bed, and it’ll be a good test to see whether any weeds appear... but we doubt it. The compost looks and smells good!

1 April Recently we’ve pruned all of the fruit trees and the roses and Caroline has tidied all of the clematis. We’ve given the roses and clematis a dose of manure, too. The hawthorn hedge has been cut, lowering the height by 6 or 7 inches. Sarah sent broad beans to replace any that were struggling or had been disturbed; we are gearing up for spring. Sadly, some of the bulbs we planted in the autumn have been dug up and eaten. We think the fact the Garden has been deserted for much of the time has meant the local wildlife has grown bold and enjoyed a Garden feast! We still have a lot of pink tulips but the white and yellow ones are scarcer than we intended. Last year's creamy tulips by the wall have come through yellow this year.

9 April A few photos from the freezing day we had on Weds! Snow on the cowslips and snakes head fritillaries, tulips bent with frost... the beautiful white stellata blooms all turned brown and crispy. April weather ....... But we  have planted sweet peas at each end of the pergola because gardeners are always optimistic.

19 April The Paulownia and willow in the corner of the lawn were pruned today by Tim, while the Gardeners observed from the shade. Tim showed us the damage caused by woodpeckers on a dead branch - now safely down. Graham was working hard all this time, weeding the orchard trees, and Marion was checking the holding bay in the hope that we will be able to offer lots of plants for sale in a couple of weeks. And look out for the glorious new bunting, ready for the re-opening of the garden and museum in May!

Getting Ready...

It is exactly a year ago that we had to leave the Walled Garden to look after itself, in the first coronavirus lockdown, and were unable to return until the end of June. For such a long time now, many of our friends and enthusiastic supporters have been unable to come and sit quietly, and absorb the wonderful atmosphere and glorious planting here. We have missed you all so much, although we have tried to give you glimpses of what has been growing, and going on in the past year. Here are some photographs of what's been happening during the past few weeks:

It will be a month or so yet (barring any more disasters) before we can open the Walled Garden to visitors, but we are so looking forward to seeing you all again. The volunteer gardeners have weeded and mulched and planted and lifted overgrown clumps (the plant sale table will be completely stocked with plants from the walled garden this year) and there is a new raised bed for dahlias, next to the tool shed up at the top of the garden. One huge job was to reduce the clumps of miscanthus that - though spectacular - had got rather too big for our comfort. We found a man with a specialist digging tool who downsized the planting, and Marion sawed up the lifted chunks until they would fit into large plant pots. Anyone with enough garden space will be able to find a bargain later in the year.

In February, as the crocuses started to appear, the dipping pond gave us a real shock by being completely empty one morning! We filled it up and, after another very cold week, it was empty again. This was really alarming but it hasn't happened since it was re-filled. We'll take greater care next winter. Then the auricula theatre, with its lovely display of snowdrops, crashed to the ground in the recent high winds, so Ruth has planted the rescued snowdrops in the orchard meadow and we've got lots of broken terracotta to put in our display pots.

One of our garden volunteers offered to weave a willow hurdle from all the branches Geoff had cut off when pollarding our willow. Easier said than done, and Penny is still trying to find a way of keeping the willow supple for a long time. She is experimenting with cornus too, now that there are a lot of cuttings around. You'll have to see how she has got on when you are able to visit.

The compost system is working really well - Geoff gave it a good sort out mid-March - and Helen toppled the last of the winter-display cardoons to make way for the coming year's spectacular show. The garden has all the signs of an approaching spring; there will be so much to see in another month or so.

With very good wishes from the garden volunteers.

Notes from the veg patch

A couple of years ago Sarah Parker joined our team of garden volunteers. Her speciality is vegetables, and we have all seen the results .

She sent this note round the Walled Gardeners and we thought you would enjoy her plans for next year:

Notes from the veg patch

Hi, I have finished going through the seed catalogues and am excited about the coming year’s potential delights. Sicilian snakes, yin and yang dwarf French beans, hopefully some better cucumbers and cucamelons ... Japanese parsley (mitsuba) and more of that lovely crunchy lettuce. I thought we might try some chillies and maybe an outdoor melon [think brave] and a tortarello [a cucumber melon, much bigger than the cucamelons]. Maybe some fennel and a variety of beans and pumpkins and squashes. Maybe even a giant pumpkin or two.

Last autumn we had a terrific onion crop from one small bed despite the bird attacks - they liked the sweet flesh too. So will definitely try those again. Indeed they are already in, along with some garlic and some very brave broad beans. And we will find room for some more sunflowers. Winter lettuce and endive are already planted and the apricot trees have arrived and are now planted. 

The veg. patch has slowed down now for the winter -  just time to send out a plea for more eggshells, walled Gardeners,  please. Clean and baked, or even unbaked. The eggshells exceeded all expectations last year in helping to repel slug attack - it was quite remarkable, even more so as the RHS has come out against eggshells being effective.

Thanks for all your help  - see you soon in the Garden. 

January 2021

Despite everything, the Walled Gardeners continue to work in the garden, giving each other plenty of space, mulching all the beds, tackling the long list of maintenance jobs and planning next year (always a cheerful job). Here are some photographs from the past couple of months:

Using flattened tin cans for the roof, Sarah built a new hedgehog house.

The pergola fruit vines had got really tangled over the past couple of summers so, since the pergola lights needed replacing, we took the opportunity to cut every vine free, then re-tie them to their best advantage. And Geoff fitted new lights.

Geoff re-staked all of the trees in the orchard.

Sarah planted two apricot trees (Tom Cot and Early Moorpark) against the old brick wall, to be espaliered as they grow. The photo below shows Caroline and Penny inspecting the new trees.

We have found mysterious tracks across the lawn; Carroll arranged for her contact Gareth to set up a nature camera… we await results!

We had hoped to have a special Snowdrop Celebration event in January, to show off our collection. Never mind - there’s always next year!

November 2020

The changing colours and temperatures show clearly in this new batch of photographs for October and early November. There was a sudden crop of fungi in the walled garden! and several small creatures are taking advantage of the quiet to come out and rush about.

Ruth uncovered a frog when weeding, our fearless robin flew out of the shed the other day when I went in, field mice zoom about and there is a little vole that scampers along the paths. (Maybe it's more than one.... so far it has moved too quickly to catch on camera.) Peter arrived to check  the hive, which is full of honey for the bees during winter, and he reported that we have happy bees. 

Harvesting continued with Sarah cooking up corn on the cob (well, the pieces the birds had left us) with parsley and butter - volunteering has several benefits! whilst Caroline planted cyclamen plants, donated by a Garden friend, under the hawthorn hedge. For weeks now everyone has been busy lifting and splitting large clumps, clearing overgrown bits, and the Holding Bay is filling up with rootlings and splits growing on for sale next year. One morning everyone was doing the Gardener's Bend at the same time - I think this is Helen but it could have been any of us.

At the start of November, when the schools had gone back, the gardeners had a RunAwayDay to explore Prinknash. It was pouring down back in Stroud but the weather there was bright and the visit pleased everyone. Then back to it.

There is still plenty to do, final weeding and mulching, and soon we'll start planting out bulbs.... watch out for more examples of the Gardener's Bend.

Susan valiantly offered to collect seeds for sale this year and could be found sitting outside the shed in the sunshine, stripping stems after they had dried off (there was an awful lot of white lavender this year...). She wrote this poem for us:

Seed Harvest
Stacked trays hold the drying bounty
Fingers run down stalks to detach dead heads
Multiple actions to empty seeds from pods
Squeezing, popping, scratching
And sieving to separate seeds from chaff
Transformed bounty emerges to store in marked envelopes
A snip at 50p, a wonder
For next year's growth

Marion H

October 2020

Below are several photographs and an update by Marion Hearfield (Garden Volunteer and Cowle Trustee).

The last two weeks of September were harvest time in the Walled Garden. Our apple trees - all local heritage varieties for baking, eating and cider-making - have produced some beautiful fruit this year. Sarah also picked a quince, and a football! The apples are now displayed on the pavilion terrace.

It was also time to cut the meadow and a big thanks to Francis and Dominic (pictured below), who volunteered to help us out by scything the area. Last Monday, Graham and Geoff raked it into heaps for Ann to barrow away. Geoff also cut the lawn that morning, ready for the Museum's very first Covid-secure event - the launch of Howard Beard's new book. Thanks to Abigail's careful planning this was a very successful gathering of invited members of Stroud Local History Society (the publishers) and old Friends of the Museum. The book is on sale in the Museum shop.

The great iris move has started too. Since one iris looks much like another at this time of year, Caroline and Ann made a map from earlier photographs, and each block has been carefully identified. Some plants have been put back in the same place, others are being moved to the new iris bed in the museum's courtyard, and the rest are being potted up for sale on the table next to the volunteers' shed. As of last Thursday (1st Oct) there were four varieties on sale; more will be added as clumps are lifted and split. The white borders are still looking lovely, and the autumn colours of the other beds glowed in the sunshine.

Marion H

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.

Walled Garden - The Lost Season March-June 2020

Monday 23 March: After all the rain, and days spent weeding in the Garden, the Monday volunteers turned out in force to mulch the borders. We managed to cover almost all of them, planning to return on Weds 25th to complete the Bonkers Border. Thanks to the threat of Covid 19, it never happened. The Garden gates were locked. The Museum and Garden were now in Lockdown. The Gardeners were locked out!

Weeks passed. The MIP Gardeners all settled to projects in their own gardens. We swapped texts and emails and photos and sent each other advice on plants. Ruth set up a WhatsApp group for us, and then, Gardeners’ ‘Zoom’ meetings, where we ‘toured’ each other’s gardens, which were looking very good! Sarah sowed vegetable seeds; Cleo sowed seeds for bedding; Caroline began the mammoth task of cataloguing every plant in the Garden, advised by a local garden historian; and Geoff amazed us with stories of his 30yr old amaryllis, and his giant, two-storey high delphinium! And we fretted about the Walled Garden, as the sun came blazing down and the ground began to dry out. Some of us, on our ‘Boris Walk’, went into the Park and peered through the old iron gate at the orangery to report what we could see: Ruth took this photo through the gate It was agonising not to be allowed in; even worse for the few Over 70s in our gardening team who, due to restrictions, couldn’t even walk in the Park.

11 April, Easter Saturday. The Museum Manager and his son set up the hose and watered the Garden, sending photos; the tulips were all in flower and looking lovely! We posted the images on our gardeners’ Whats App, and emailed them to others; Cleo chose an image for the Walled Garden Instagram page; and Marion posted the first of the photos out to The Friends. During their routine checks on the Museum over the following weeks, Fran and Kevin sent new photographs. The colours in the Garden were wonderful, the new tulips gorgeous! But the Garden was still sizzling in the heat. Then, on 22nd April, while the Garden gently fried, the ‘leaky hose’ watering system was set up. Just in time……

We have beautiful photos of the Garden in April, emailed out to all the Friends by Marion. The euphorbias turned lime green; the meadow was pink with ragged robin and campion; lupins shot up; the Mediterranean border was a joy; blackbirds built a nest in the plant stall ‘holding bay’ racking, and soon there were five eggs. We all were cheered by the images. What a special place we have made, between us all. And then, in all their glory, the irises began to flower… with none of us there to enjoy them.

If you’d walked past the Museum at the end of April, you’ll have seen the wisteria, a mass of sweet-smelling purple; but inside the Walled Garden, a white-flowering version was stretching along the wall, almost dripping flowers. The plants were all enjoying the unusually hot weather. The Museum Manager recorded a short video of the tranquil Garden, with birdsong as the soundtrack and shared it on You Tube.

Monday 11 May - The Museum Manager began to risk assess access to the Garden for some garden volunteers, now all anxious that at a time of year when everything grows, the Garden had been left untended. Safety rules were drawn up, a rota devised, and on, and on..

Monday 18 May, nine weeks since Lockdown, all the Monday gardeners below the age of 70, one by one, came for a 25 minute ‘tour’ in turn to view the Garden. It looked lovely, better than we had dared hope. We sent the news back to the others - the Garden was OK! Work began on the 20th May. First, we watered, and watered, and watered. The earth was bone dry. Then close-up inspection revealed the results of lack of attention. Plants had survived the heat, but hadn’t grown as much as they should have done. The ivy-leaf hydrangea was in a sorry state. There were weeds….quite a lot of them! Plants had withered and died at the plant sale and plant holding bay. The Eryngium ‘Miss Willmott's’ Ghost’ had gone absolutely mad and filled the Stellata border with seedlings. Two people at a time were now allowed into the Garden, and to allow everyone to have a chance to be there - nine gardeners in all - we established a rota system, giving each person a 90 minute slot (too short, they all said, but at least they were in!). Ruth, having introduced most of us to Zoom, now instigated an online Doodle Poll to help us to keep track of who was coming in to work in the Garden, and when. A pair of blackbirds followed us about, indignant that we were daring to come into their garden! But they enjoyed our weeding and digging as we disturbed the worms for them! The bees didn’t mind our being there either. By the start of June, we had made headway. As Govt safety advice was updated, now we were allowed one extra person per session. The vegetable seedlings, protected from slugs by hundreds of crushed-up eggshells, were planted into a newly-manured bed at the pergola. The herb beds and raised beds have had a ‘makeover’ and growing well, our own organically produced edibles!

15th June - Things were changing rapidly and now up to four people could work any one time. This made a huge difference! It was possible to have enough time to complete a task. Then from 22nd June, finally, our four Over-70s gardeners were able to join us. Hooray! Early July - The lawn is cut, the hedge is trimmed, the weeds are under control, the mulching continues, the sale plants are nearly ready, the front border of the Museum is rescued: huge amounts of energy have been expended. The Walled garden is now ready for human visitors again.

We, the gardeners, are all very grateful to Fran and to Marion for circulating photographs of the Garden during Lockdown, keeping in touch with all our Friends and supporters with positive news and beautiful images and so playing our part in the Museum’s online presence. We lost nearly a whole season in the Garden, but it was captured in these images. We feel very lucky to be back in our lovely Museum Secret Garden - and, as one volunteer said to me,"The Garden needed us; and we needed the Garden". We hope to see you all there, soon. The Walled Garden - which has now reached the notice of national organisations and specialist reporters - has its own Instagram account, started and regularly updated by Cleo Mussi, the garden's designer. So, if you enjoy Instagram or know others who do, visit http://www.instagram.com/walledgardenstroud

Winter 2020 in the Walled Garden

The Garden looked lovely for December 2019 - a bit frosty; dressed with stars by artist Corinne Hockley; the Christmas trees on display instead of hiding by the Shed and the pergola lights switched on. Then, with the Museum closed to the public for January 2020 rather than December, the Garden Volunteer Team were able to get going on tasks straightaway.

Peter Lead, the beekeeper and Buzz Club organiser, moved the hive a little further into the mead-ow, with the help of Geoff, John, Rob and Dave. The hive originally had been placed rather close to the wall, meaning that Buzz Club had limited space from which to view the bees. We covered the area beneath the hive with a membrane and then topped it with woodchip to make a defined standing area for our young Buzz Club beekeepers. The bees seem happy with our work - we managed not to upset them as we have not moved them very far at all.

The herb beds, which had been completely taken over by mint, are having a re-vamp by Sarah Parker with the help of new Gardening Volunteer, Nicola. They’ve removed bags full of mint roots, sifted the soil and a plan has been devised for ‘themed’ herbs.  One bed will have herbs said to be good for the lungs; one for the stomach and digestion; and the third, nearest the Shed, will become our ‘First Aid’ bed, with herbs for cuts and bruises. They are hoping to have the beds planted in the next few weeks. The beds are being laid out in a traditional manner with defined sections marked by stout canes.

Sarah also recycled some items set aside for the Skip in January. Bits of the old outdoor chess-board have now become gardening ‘kneelers’, and hula hoops are supporting the plastic which forms homemade protection for our winter salad vegetables.

The weekend of 8th/9th February was our first Snowdrop Celebration event in the Walled Garden in recognition of the Giant Snowdrop Company of Hyde, Stroud.  The Company offered rare varieties of snowdrops by mail order for the first time during the 1950s and early 60s. A special archive of materials featuring RHS medals, snowdrop catalogues, letters and photographs has been donated for the Museum Collection by the Mathias family and the family of Herbert Ransom, of the GSC.

Visitors were able to view these items on display in the Foyer, together with a small but very special collection of snowdrops in the Walled Garden representing those listed in the sales catalogues from the firm. In the Shed a more comprehensive collection of information sheets and press cuttings is now available for the Volunteers to assist with background knowledge to better serve the visitors to the garden. Mirrors on long handles were purchased to enable easier viewing of the markings inside the snowdrops flowers.

The event attracted many Galanthophiles eager to buy new snowdrops for their own collection from Chris Ireland-Jones of the internationally reknowned company Avon Bulbs. The Museum’s event was advertised on the back of the Avon catalogue alongside much bigger venues! The Stroud News and Journal published a two-page photo article thanks to photographer Simon Pizzey. There was an excellent talk by Jane Kilpatrick and Jennifer Harmer, co-authors of ‘The Galanthophiles’.  With a pop-up cafe, children’s trail, performance by Bill Jones, winter plants from The Nursery at Miserden and a lovely selection of goods in the Museum shop we gardeners were all very happy with our new venture. Even Storm Dennis didn’t deter visitors on the Sunday (Saturday had brought sunshine and blue skies and in the warmth outside the Pavilion you could have mistaken it for the South of France!).

….and now, after February rain, with the last snowdrops fading we are preparing for Spring.  This year, we’ve taken on the extra task of looking after the courtyard and the borders outside the old front door of the Mansion in the hope that the new planting will entice visitors through the gates and into the Museum and ‘back ‘garden. So far, this work has been undertaken despite the downpours!

Geoff has pollarded the willow by the Sheds; last year’s stalks and seedheads are now in our new, improved compost system; Marion’s plant ‘holding bay’ has had to be extended! The primroses are in flower and the tulip bulbs are sending up shoots…

Spring is almost here…..but, with winter still clinging on, the supply of kindling from the Monday Shed is still very much in demand!

The Walled Garden now has its own Instagram account! So, if you are into Instagram or know others who are visit www.instagram.com/walledgardenstroud

Autumn/Winter 2019

There’s been plenty of colour in the Walled Garden throughout the summer and now in the autumn, there’s still lots to see. We benefit from the glorious backdrop of the Stratford Park arboretum:  stand on the Garden lawn and look out beyond the walls, to the oaks and beeches, the cedars and hollies. Within the Walled Garden, Cleo Mussi’s planting scheme is delivering all-year round interest…something that is not easy to achieve. 

The pumpkins at the pergola have been much more successful this year, thanks to the help of Sarah Parker (and organic seaweed fertiliser!), including a group of knitters [pictured] lead by Sarah’s mum who created colourful knitted supports for the gourds. While still not as plentiful as Sarah would like, there were enough pumpkins and gourds to provide a Garden Trail at half term and a gloriously bright display at the Auricula Theatre, created by a teenage visitor with help from Garden Volunteer Caroline. We were able to add some of our own collection of heritage apples, too - our first real, though small, crop from the orchard.

Up on the bank below the hedgerow, there are the bright red stalks of the Cornus, red leaves of the Hydrangea Quercifolia, and some wonderful autumn chrysanthemums. As a contrast, the silver-grey Cotton Thistles make for a dramatic introduction to the Garden, surviving through the wind and rain, while up on the White border near the Pavilion, the Rubus and Miss Willmott’s Ghost are striking features as autumn sets in. 

Regular visitors will notice some activity at the Meadow. We’ve had an invasion of knapweed this summer, and whilst the sea of purple has looked lovely, the plant is now very dominant. We decided to experiment and take drastic action and have been hard at work digging out big, well-established knapweed clumps (with tough roots). We will re-seed some areas in a bid to balance the show of meadow flowers next year.

The dipping pond has had a ‘makeover’, too, with the addition of more, larger-leafed water lilies. The aim is to cover the surface of the pond, with the lily leaves and blooms, while the water beneath stays cool and fresh.

Currently we are working with the Collections Assistant, Fern, to create two new interpretation panels for the Garden, to be installed after the Museum’s Winter closure (opening times). Garden volunteers have contributed ideas and photographs for the panels, which will show a few images of the Walled Garden before it was opened to the public.

We had a good crop of runner beans again this summer, which along with soft fruit earlier in the season were sold at reception. The plums and Bramley apples, in contrast with the overwhelming crop of last year seem to have taken a year off maybe as ‘recovery’ or due to the seasonal weather conditions.

We have plans to try to produce more edible plants next year, and linked with this, we’ve begun a new regime for making compost, with the aim of producing enough to serve our needs in the Garden. Geoff has been busy sorting out the compost bays.

Meanwhile, Caroline collected flower seeds, which are available at the Museum, along with plants, some donated by visitors, but mostly from cuttings from the Walled Garden and prepared by Marion with her helpers. The men are busy chopping firewood, always welcome this time of year.

As cold weather approaches, we are leaving stalks and seed heads to add winter interest, for as long as they hold up to the wind and rain. Then there are bulbs to plant, shrubs to trim. The Bobbly border has had a preliminary ‘haircut’ from Cleo’s snippers; we have had to remove one of our Bay trees which was looking very unhappy; and there’s plenty of tidying up to do. Every Monday, the volunteer gardeners move in.

Other news is that we are going to look after the border at the front of the Museum, by the old front door into the mansion. The Park team have kindly cleared the ground for us, ready for some new planting. So- Watch this Space!

Ann Taylor (and the other garden volunteers)