October in the Walled Garden

 We ended our September report promising Autumn Colour – and here it is! Glorious!

(Above - five photographs of autumn scenes in the walled garden)

The apples didn’t disappoint, either. Here’s our display of some of the orchard apples – all are varieties local to Gloucestershire and the south-west, and many are on the rare’ or endangered’ lists now.

We are still collecting the Bramleys, the most delicious cooking apples that just melt into a puree. For a short while longer, apples are available from the stall near Reception. We have also donated some to ‘Orchard Revival’.

But the warm October days have confused the plants (and the gardeners!) as flowers continued to grow, and seedlings shot up, and the ground was far too warm to contemplate bulb-planting and cutting-back.

(Photograph of ‘confused’ gardeners drinking tea by the Shed!)

Instead, we busied ourselves with little jobs.

We admired the work of Greenfields gardeners, who came to give the Museum wisteria a late summer cut (with thanks to Jane Kilpatrick for her generous sponsorship for this essential work).

Sarah made a magnificent lid for the bowser

Penny discovered Miner Bees in the Mediterranean border

David came to sow seeds of the Bee Orchid and Scented Orchid.

We discovered a hedgehog nest (photograph) in the Garden, where we know we have two adult hedgehogs and four baby hoglets.

The dahlias continued to bloom (Photograph of pink/purple dahlia).

….and on 31st October, we found a friendly little mouse happily watching our activities!

 But now, the real work begins……..

September at the Walled Garden

While some of the gardeners were still off on late summer expeditions, September passed by in a blur of activity here at the MiP Walled Garden.

First came the scything of the meadow, which proved a tricky affair! Unfortunately, the weather was rather sultry, brewing for a storm…and the bees were not happy! Our scythers, Fran and Dom, had to retreat with the meadow unfinished, seen off by scouts from the hive… A week later, Francis returned in protective gear, but to no avail!

The Buzz Club beekeeper, Peter, says the bees are fine – they just didn’t like us thrashing about near their hive this year! We’ve nearly managed to clear the meadow – it’s taken a while.

On Wednesday 7th September, Tim Hardy from Woodchester Park and Garden Services came to cut down the willow in the corner of the lawn. We think the tree had died through a lack of water. We shall use some of the wood as mulch, when ready.

Then came the drystone wall, a ‘teaching tool’ and part of the Museum’s Education programme. The wall is deliberately unfinished to demonstrate its construction.

Ruth continued with dye experiments, using plants from the Garden to make inks. Here on the left is her display demonstrating some of the colours she’s produced from flowers, bark, and leaves.

Cleo trimmed the topiary. After six years, the tiny plants we put in are now beginning to make more impact.

Away from all the distractions, we got on with some work: weeding, replacing the woody lavender plants with new ones and attacking the rampant Miss Willmott’s Ghost; potting up cuttings…

Cheryl is transforming the borders at the front of the Museum, at present working on the shady areas near the plunge pool.

Back in the Walled Garden, we’ve discovered our two hedgehogs have had babies! 6 hoglets, in fact!  We’ve had to construct a temporary ramp as we found two of them had got stuck at the bottom of the old steps. We’re also in close contact with the local Hedgehog Hospital regarding their welfare.

Phew!  It’s been quite a month! Now we look forward to some autumn colour… more in the next blog!  

August

The hot weather continued, and fearing a water shortage, we invested in a bowser for the walled garden. Who needs weight-training in a gym, when you could be carrying full watering cans up and down the slopes at 6am? Caroline was in at this early hour through the hottest weeks, with Ann staggering in at 8am as backup (Not a morning person!).

The bowser made it easier to water the courtyard and the bottom of the garden as we could wheel the water supply to the plants!

Our bowser is a true antique but with modern, user-friendly adjustments. Tracked down by Sarah (demonstrating the bowser here), collected by Phil, and accessorised by Marion, this was another inspired project by the Garden team!

Meanwhile, the peas, beans and lettuces grew happily at the pergola and the onions expanded to exhibition-size! In the high temperatures, we had to suspend the plant sale and concentrated on keeping cuttings alive….

We were amazed to see the plum tree dripping with ripe plums…in early August! Too soon! Half of the Walled Garden Volunteers were still away on holiday, and we couldn’t quite keep up with the picking!

But our dyer-gardener, Ruth, had rich-pickings amongst the dye plants, demonstrating her skills each Wednesday morning at the Garden.

Now it’s early September; we have quite a list of tasks ahead of us. First, the scything of the meadow. A challenging morning: the humid air, threatening a thunderstorm, made our bees very grumpy.

Fran and Dom look cheery here, and ready to cut the meadow…but soon after, they were pursued by bees, and each was stung!

Fortunately, Peter and the Buzz Club were on hand to advise. We abandoned the meadow for the day, half-finished, to wait for a cooler morning and with the bees fast asleep in their hive.

The dead willow tree in the corner of the lawn is no more; Tim arrived on Monday and felled it, saying it probably had been suffering from lack of water.  We shall miss the welcome pool of shade up in the corner of the lawn.

The smaller branches have been shredded and will be left to be used as mulch in five months’ time.

But no time to ponder on that just now…time to get cracking!

High Summer in the Walled Garden

The hot weather is challenging the garden and the gardeners but it is harvest time, so we all keep going.

The old Bramley apple tree is packed with fruit this year - and there are plenty of plums ripening, too; we’ll bag them up for sale in a few weeks time.

The surrounding meadow is in its third flush of wild flowers, purple knapweed dominating now. 

The garlic is already drying in the shed and Sarah lifted the onions from their raised bed this week. The everlasting sweet peas at the end of the pergola threatened to block the path! So Geoff tied them back.

In late Summer we shall start to lift and pot up any seedlings . We can then sell well- established plants in the autumn, to raise money for next year’s planting. However at present it is too hot and too dry to do this work. 

The mulch we put down in the winter must be helping to keep moisture in the soil, but we are keeping note of the plants which are coping with the current weather conditions. We may need to adapt the planting for future years ; however, the  garden is mostly in full summer glory, with sun-loving flowers enjoying the heat. 

Do come and sit for a while.

New Arrivals - hedgehogs and an orchid

On Monday 27th June the volunteers oversaw the transplanting of a Pyramidal Orchid to the Walled Garden lawn. This orchid was donated by someone who was moving house.

We have twice tried and failed to transplant a wild orchid from one of the volunteer’s garden, but this failed!

We found a local expert who went to see the orchid, anacamptis pyramidal, in the Stroud garden, observed its orientation, when and where the sun caught it, and then came to the walled garden to work out where best we might transplant the orchid, and marked out the spot on the lawn.

They then prepared the spot for the orchid and went to dig out the orchid from the Stroud garden, keeping the roots of the orchid undisturbed. They also collected the turf from around the orchid, marking it so that it could be replanted at the walled garden in the exact same positions.  

After planting the orchid in the lawn the turf from the garden was placed around the orchid in the same orientation as it was found. We then placed a barrier around it to protect it.

At the time of writing the orchid is doing well, so far!

In June we welcomed two hedgehogs into the garden. These were re-housed by Annie from the Help a Hedgehog Hospital. She was accompanied by students from Thomas Keble School. Puffin (male) and Prickleberry (female) took up residence under the plum tree in the wild meadow of the walled garden.

We had a good number of visitors to our first Stroud Open Gardens event. Our ‘Match the Vegetable to the Leaf’ challenge occupied many families, young and old alike!

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