July 2020

A lovely quiet day

It started with an eye-to-eye with a small, young?, hare (it then then sped off past Daisy’s towards the treehouse). Then I spied a kingfisher zooming away from the Italian Garden (although we emptied the lily pond last year, a few small fish remain ...

veg 030720

Veg aplenty

It was so lovely to greet our first visitors to the Gardens since lockdown eased and to have a good selection of veg on offer for them. Our volunteers enjoyed the opportunity to chat to the visitors as they explored the Gardens. Maybe the sun will also sh ...

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The battle against box moths

Box tree caterpillars can eat their way through all the leaves on box bushes/trees and there can be 2 or 3 caterpillar hatchings a year. The moths were first reported in Britain in 2007 and are now widespread in London and the South East, so we have been ...

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Prepping for wall building

Denny is all set now to rebuild the wall at the back of the kitchen garden with our old bricks, delivered to him by John, Sam and Stephen. It will really tidy up that corner. Perhaps it might also keep off more frosts and increase the warmth in that area? ...

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Trims all round this week!

The prunus lusitanica (Portuguese laurel) in the Italian garden were simultaneously trimmed today by Steve, John, Martin and Sam. I don’t think Sue gave marks out of ten for their efforts at clipping to umbrella shape!! After a little light rain, th ...

June 2020

Haircuts for our trees!

Our trees are allowed haircuts even if we are still not! The tree-surgeons were reducing the crown in this large bifurcated red oak at the bottom of the Glade to reduce the risk of it losing big branches and improve its health and longevity. They also tid ...

bdr

Next up: pseudo acacias

The trees in the Gardens are looking beautiful and not yet suffering from the drought. We have three or four white and pink Robinia pseudoacacias, which don’t always flower but are this year. The indian horsechestnut is also in flower, while the ran ...

bty

Hot, hot, hot

It was 28 degrees at times on Thursday and it felt it! We had volunteers back working in the Gardens, with a full set of Covid 19 risk mitigation measures in place. So we spread out across the Gardens to start getting back on top of more of the basic main ...

rhododendron 1 May 2020

A beautiful invasive species!

The Rhododendrons are flowering prolifically in the Japanese garden under development. Our volunteers are progressively cutting them back into shape, so not letting them be the menace they can be when left untended. In large parts of the UK they have take ...

bty

Into the pink

Pink roses, lupins and campion are adding to the range of colours in the Italian garden, as well as orange helianthemums and purple alliums. They contrast beautifully with the fresh greens of the euphorbia and the trees and the silver of the yukka, phlomi ...

laburnam April 2020

The stunning laburnam walk

The laburnum walk is looking fabulous, with cow parsley wafting along the edge of the path. These are common laburnums. Unfortunately the Gardens’ county champion Laburnam Alpinum, which used to tower over the archive building, fell last year – ...

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Our first rose of the year

The Countess of Warwick loved her roses. She planted a roserie at Stone Hall, her hideaway cottage the other side of her estate, and each rose had a Tudor rose shaped label, with a relevant quote from a poem. An 1886 magazine article says that at Easton L ...