Bye bye Layer Marney *sob*

Friday was my last day at the Towers and I’m writing this on Monday with the wierdest feeling because I’m not at work and not on holiday either. Before I left I took a handful of photos of the gardens, trying to capture the sense of the place and its surroundings.

The box knot and view down towards the Blackwater Estuary

I’va always enjoyed trimming the box knot – it appeals to the tidy bit of my brain. Sometime I’d like to make a knot garden from the herbs the Tudors would have used – hyssop, santolina, lavender, germander etc. There is a lovely example of this over at Cressing Temple near Chelmsford.

The south facing Long Gallery border

MsV and I rejigged this border about five years ago and it’ll need it again fairly soon but I’m glad to see it looking nice in the sunshine. The Hollyhocks don’t quite fit the theme of hot colours but who can turn down a volunteer hollyhock?

The Lower Garden with a view down to the brook

The little yews are getting along ok despite the struggles I had with them to start off with. All the borders around this lawn are ones I put in – they really improve the look of the bottom half of the garden. These days visitors spend a little longer in the garden as they go down to have a look at them, which is just what I wanted.

Verbena bonariensis in front of the Tower

The loss of the Swamp Cypress has opened up views of the Tower like this one which is the silver lining to that cloud. MsV (who has replaced me) will spend a lot less time raking up needles than I have done over the years!

The top garden basking in the sun

I’ll miss it like hell – I’ve really enjoyed working there. The people at the Towers are a really great bunch, the gardens are interesting, challenging and beautiful and I’ve really had the opportunity to use my own creativity to make an impact and an improvement. I came to the gardens as a trembling newbie, in over my head a bit in all honesty, but I’ve grown into the role and have brought the gardens along with me and that’s been amazing.

Now I need to get busy scouring the Nottingham/Derby area for a new challenge – somewhere I can use my experience and learn new things too. There’s always something new to learn in gardening – that’s the joy of it!

Hampton Court 2014

On Tuesday Mum and I made our annual RHS Flower show trip and 2014 is a Hampton Court year. Pimms, pretty flowers and rain were the standout features, as usual.

The conceptual gardens were based around the seven deadly sins and my favourite was Wrath – Eruption of unhealed anger:

Wrath

I also liked Pride and Lust. I always find myself prefering the conceptual gardens that are more garden and less conceptual. I don’t doubt that they can be done well but the curse of the conceptual garden is that they often feature an unpalatable combination of heavy-handed teen-poetry symbolism with gimickry and a sprinkling of pretentious wankery.

There were also turf sculpures. I love the soft green shapes of turf sculpture (though I have to silence the irritatingly practical side of my brain that insists on piping up with ‘well, that’d be a bugger to mow.’)

Turf Sculpture by Tony Smith

The ‘Your Garden, Your Budget’ gardens had us saying ‘not my budget, love.’ My previous rant on the subject is here (Got ten grand to spare on a garden?) and applies to this show too as the gardens had similar budgets.

I wouldn’t expect to like the winner from this category if I had read a description; it is pale to the point of iciness, modern looking and clean-edged. However, the designer (Alexandra Froggatt) has succeeded in creating a beautifully calm atmosphere, cool and still.

Peaceful and pale

My favourite show garden was the Jordan’s wildlife garden which only got a silver (one of my conclusions from this show is that  I have no idea how the judges score the gardens). I wanted to walk into it. The textures of wood and straw, the turf which was mostly ‘weeds’ and the colourful beds of flowers to attract the bees and butterflies were very appealing. None of my pics of it are very good though so this will have to do:

Jordan’s Wildlife Garden

On the plants front – my next garden will contain this combination seen on the David Austin stand:

Roses ‘Summer Song’ (orange) and ‘LDBraithwaite’ (red)

This Digitalis featured in several of the gardens and we hunted it out in the floral tent to find out what it is:

Digitalis ‘Illumination Pink’

And now that I google it I find that it was Plant of the Year at RHS Chelsea. Which goes to show how much attention I’ve been paying to the gardening media over the last few months! Oops.

A Tymperleys Update

The garden at Tymps has been growing like crazy. I’ve got a nifty little battery powered mower for it now (Bosch – can’t remember the exact model) which is pretty good. It feels a little flimsy but it’s light enough to pick up and carry with ease and cuts nicely – I’ll definitely be considering one for my own small garden next time I need to get a mower.

The back garden at Tymps

The cotton lavender needs to be cut back hard after it’s flowered as it’s a little floppy, but otherwise I’m really happy with how it’s going. The weeds are getting into the fight back now but the soil is light enough to make hoeing easy.

Jacob’s Ladder

This pic of the Jacob’s Ladder (Polemonium caeruleum) illustrates the colour scheme nicely. The blues and yellows make the garden seem cheerful and sunny even on an overcast day.

Geranium ‘Silver Queen’

I’ve planted this geranium in the shadier end of the garden and its pale blue flowers are luminous.

Tymperleys front garden

I haven’t done much in the front garden as the border to the left of this picture will probably disappear under flagstones. Having the tables on the grass isn’t ideal as the grass won’t appreciate quite so much traffic. The bland shrub border to the right can be given a bit of  a revamp once the paving layouts are finished.

You can see that the big lavender bushes along the front of the building seem to have survived having builders around. Phew!

If you’re in Colchester you can go and have a look – the tea room is open now (it’s also available as an events venue) and I have to say the food was lovely when my Mum and I popped in for lunch one day. I’m not just saying that, honest!

Roots down, leaves up.

Last Friday MsV and I planted up the garden at Tymperleys. At this stage all the plants are small and green and blobby so a picture doesn’t look very impressive:

The central beds are edged with Lavender ‘Hidcote’ and Santolina incana and contain various herbs. Some of these aren’t available from the nursery yet so there will have to be another smaller planting session in the middle of April.

In the corner beds I’ve taken my cue from the existing cardoons and echinops, so we have more of those to give height, plus yellow roses (‘Charlotte’) and hypericum and a variety of pretty perennials including Leucanthemum ‘T.E.Killen’ to provide some cheery daisies. On the wall to the right I’ve planted more yellow roses (‘Maigold’ and ‘Golden Showers’) and a blue Clematis (Perle d’Azur’) with blue Irises along the front of the bed.

Planting them up was done in a jiffy – then we had to contend with the fact that there isn’t an outside tap yet! In the end a long hose and a certain amount of bodging sufficed but it still didn’t quite reach so I hauled watering cans for the furthest plants.

A New Project

It looks like my blog mojo might be flowing again. And what has helped the sap to rise? Spring of course. That and a new project. My employers have bought the lease to Tymperleys, a historic building in Colchester that, until recently, has been a clock museum. They’re opening it as a tea room and functions venue. But who cares about that? The exciting bit is that I’ve got a new garden to play with!

The garden is a town garden and can be split into two areas. The front has a lawn surrounded by borders consisting mostly of shrubs. There are several large and lovely lavender plants along the front of the building (which isn’t pictured because… well I was more interested in the garden and forgot, nevermind – it’s largely covered by scaffolding at the moment anyway).

Front lawn and stylish blue door

We’ll be making this a bit more interesting in the future but it will stay largely as it is for the time being until the paving for outside dining has been finished and we know exactly what we’re dealing with.

The rear part of the garden has geometric beds, brick paths and several mature trees.

The geometric beds and trees

Those large evergreens at the back are bay trees. I was amazed at the size of them and have to admit that until I took a proper look I was just assuming they were Holm Oaks (oh the shame). The gnarly old crone on the left is a Mulberry tree with a TPO that I fear is not long for this world as there’s a lot of rotting wood right at the base.

Initial plans are for fresh planting in the geometric and corner beds and the trellises on the walls. Later on I will make better use of the shady area under the trees too. I have a colour scheme in mind for this area – I’m aiming for cheerful yellows, whites and blues (which will veer towards purple just because true blue would be a very tough restriction) to give this garden a fresh and sunny feel.

The building is medieval and so I want to give a nod to that in my planting by using a number of ancient herbs but by restricting my colour choices I hope to also give it a modern touch and prevent it from slipping into being twee.

I do love this bit – the anticipating and planning and imagining! I’ll be sure to post an update once there are green things going into the soil (which is beautiful by the way – loose and crumbly and dark, yum.)

The Storm

So, we had a storm. It wasn’t the first (or worst) storm we’ve ever experienced and it won’t be the last. But this one did bring down our big and beautiful Swamp Cypress tree.

This tree:

The Swamp Cypress in a past autumnal glory

The tree that was as tall as the tower and probably two hundred years old.

So sad.

So FarmGuy and I began clearing it away after the wind died down. We’ve still got work to do tomorrow. And then we’ll need to remove the remaining trunk for various reasons.

FarmGuy doing the chainsaw work

I could have cried (but I didn’t because FarmGuy would have taken the piss). This is going to change the entire look and feel of the garden. I have lost a friend.

Anyway. I’m going to inflict my mediocre poetry on you now because no death should go without some form of eulogy, however poor.

 

Today I Dismembered You, Old Friend.

Today I dismembered you, old friend.

I took your sinewy strips of red bark
and narrow, crackling fingers
and put them on a bonfire.

I sliced your white fibrous limbs
into fat chunks for later.

It is a violation, a betrayal, a chore.
Can it be an honouring?

The incense scent of your sap
and the green grit of your lichens
are smeared across my skin.

I will miss you.

 

Summer pruning the espallier apples

Earlier in the year I posted a ‘how-to’ on training espallier apple trees and in that post some summer training and pruning is mentioned. I’ve just done it:

Espallier apple in summer

What I did:

1. I tied in the new laterals to the diagonal canes. These will be lowered to horizontal this winter.

2. I cut side shoots back to a few leaves. These will be shortened further in the winter.

3. I replaced the cane frame because I still haven’t been given the wires I’ve been promised since these trees were first planted! Given each horizontal tier of branches represents a year, and the first year’s efforts were destroyed by hungry goats you can figure out how many years it has been. I can’t do it myself since it’s particularly beloved brickwork. Resigned sigh…

The Good, The Bad and the Beautiful – July 2013

Only six days late. Ahem. Anyway, moving swiftly onwards.

The Good

We’re going to be on the telly again! ‘Flog It!’ was filmed at the Towers in the middle of the month. It’s a BBC antiques programme that is the baby brother of Antiques Roadshow.

It’s always a bit wierd when we’re going to be filmed because the areas that will be on camera get extra special attention (because I’m sure on an antiques programme they would linger on a shot of a stray thistle, of course they would) and the other bits get sort of… left to fall behind. A little. So having been manically making the main areas extra special perfect, I had a week’s holiday and now we’re catching up on the private gardens and other nooks and crannies.

The Bad

There I was, doing a bit of edging, smiling at the members of the public walking past, laughing politely at the ‘you can do mine when you’ve finished’ joke for the nth time (if I had a pound…) when a nice lady approached me, smiling. ‘Aha!’ I thought to myself, ‘she wishes to avail herself of the mighty wikipedia of gardening knowledge who kneels before her picking up small bits of grass from round the edges of the lawns.’

‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘Can I ask a question?’

‘Of course.’ I said, slightly smugly.

‘There’s a weed in the knot garden. Could you tell me what it is?’

After I’d picked my pride off the lawn (it landed on a daisy) I followed her to look at the offending weed. It was oxalis:

Sneaky little purple blighter

I think there might be a moral to this story about pride or maybe doing the weeding. But mostly just… Grrr Oxalis.

The Beautiful

Larkspur

Dahlia ‘David Howard’

Tasty tasty lavender.

 

The Tudor Border

I can’t believe how long it is since I promised a post on the Tudor border. When I first planted it, as is so often the case, it looked very boring indeed. Small green blobs in an expanse of soil. So now it’s starting to come into itself I thought I’d share some pics.

The tudor border in summer glory.

In this pic we can see Clary Sage which was used to treat eye complaints. Lady’s Mantle edges the bed in front of the picture and Heartsease to the right. The Heartsease is just going over now but it’s been glorious all Spring. The scraggly plants just behind the Lady’s Mantle are Soapwort, only recently transplanted and just getting the hang of things. A section at the front of the bed contains annuals; Pot Marigold, Field Poppy, Cornflower, Larkspur and Love-in-a-Mist.

I used bent lengths of dogwood to edge the bed, partly to discourage trampling kids when the lamb feeding was nearby but it’s quite attractive in a rustic sort of a way. You need to strip all the bark away from any part that’s going in the soil because otherwise you’ll have a nice new dogwood patch. Experience suggests willow is also good.

Rosa mundi

The houses of York and Lancaster were represented by a white and red rose respectively and fought over the crown of England in the War of the Roses. A striped rose that contained both colours could be a symbol of the peace brought by Henry Tudor (or at least that was the spin).

If you are bored you might play spot the weeds.

The other side is edged with Santolina AKA Cotton Lavender which is good for hayfever and other stuffy noses. I run some through my hand to sniff when I’m feeling bunged up and the scent does seem to help.

Other plants I’ve included that aren’t pictured/visible are; Mullein, Lemon Balm, Angelica, Rosemary, Sage, Hyssop and Thyme. I’ve left space for Ox-Eye Daisy which I’m growing on from seed and I want to squeeze in some Iris florentina somewhere too. A friend has hinted about some Mandrake, but it’s notoriously hard to propogate so we shall see.

Mostly I’ve managed to get hold of the ‘right’ sort of plant with the exception of Carnations. I’ve resorted to a variety called Hardy Border Mix which I grew from seed as I couldn’t even figure out which variety of Carnation would be ‘Tudor appropriate’, let alone get hold of any. Nevermind, it’s still a nice plant:

Not a Tudor Carnation

 

The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful – June 2013

The Good

The huge Rosa banksiae we have growing across one entire side of East Court flowers in May/June on the previous years’ wood, unlike most other roses. I have previously semi-managed it by removal of a few trespassing bits in the winter but it had got rather out of hand and was making its way into the roof and therefore had to be dealt with. So I was busy hacking away and pretending to be a supervillain going up and down in my cherry picker (why yes I have an active imagination, why do you ask?) and then…

Woe is me! I dislodged a nest of miniscule baby birds. Woe! Woe!

So I tucked the nest back in a sheltered spot as close as possible to where I found it, crossed my fingers and felt very, very guilty.  But hurrah! They’re ok:

Live baby goldfinches. Phew!

The Bad

Mullein moth. I say no more:

Ugh

It looks like they’ll flower ok, fortunately.

The Beautiful

I change my favourite rose almost as often as I change my underwear at this time of year but this has a permanent place in the Top 5:

Rosa ‘Constance Spry