20220120_101918

Dead, crossed or poor shape

Neil helped us prune the apples and pears this week. My recollection of his key messages: first cut out dead wood; then take out branches which cross; and finally focus on the shape of the tree – with the aim of opening up the centre to allow air to ...

20220113_105349

New year, new home

Sue, new volunteer Jo, and Peter took the opportunity of lovely weather and relatively soft soil on Thursday to move these cornus bushes from their nursery bed to the winter walk. Meanwhile others gave a new home to snowdrops recovered from a compost pile ...

20211209_103921

A fun activity

The wisps weren’t very long to play with this year, but Clare still managed to create a lovely swirly crown for the willows by the rill pond. It was a cool morning, when Ian and Tony were planting trees in a small glade and Sue was sowing wild flowe ...

6.1.23

All hands on leaf collecting

The thing about arboretums is they produce a lot of leaves! Last year the leaves disappeared – we must have had winds just as the leaves were falling? This year we have worked hard to collect them in, so that we can make lots of lovely leaf mould, f ...

20211111_114227

A gorgeous autumn day

Today the sun shone and it was beautifully warm at the Gardens, so it was a real pleasure to be there, cutting back the geraniums, planting bulbs, raking leaves, adding to the dead hedges and getting the rill flowing. It was lovely to welcome Ruth from th ...

20211014_134628

Larking

We get a lot done on volunteer days at the Gardens – and have fun too! This week we spread out around the Gardens in a big push to tidy up and get ready for this Sunday’s final Open Day of the season. We have picked and cleaned the pumpkins an ...

20210930_114204

Onward march

Looking for unexploded ordnance and finding plant labels, that is the name of this game – Bill has been making steady progress on it and this week Paul and Peter from Great Easton joined the fray. Our hope is that, once the way has been declared cle ...

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Apples for all: wildlife and us

We are having a good year for apples and hope you will come and enjoy them with us, on Sunday, at our Apples and Bees Day. We have a good picking of Bramleys for sale and volunteers have taken some for jellies, mincemeat and cakes for the Open Day. Visito ...