The panels at the front of the cottage bowed outwards when we arrived.
The Under Gardener spent an entire summer stripping each section back to the wattle. Seared me witless to see what had
been hidden for over 350 years. After treating the timbers he replaced everything with lime mortar, which is a long
and painstaking job. After each panel was finished it was left to dry and then painted white. Each panel took
a month each to restore but the end product is going to last for many years to come.
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| The newly competed north front refurbishment, December frost 2006. |
This makes me feel cold just looking at it! I planted wall
flowers our first winter with forget me not and Queen of the Night tulips. The wall flowers were totally demolished
by the bunnies. The Doberman was not doing her job. Now I put in pansy and forget me not, the little fluffy
jobs do not seem to like either of them! Hosta plants fill these beds in summer and a close eye has to be kept on them
as they are coming up. The snails hide most effectively in the forget me not and then they will much thought the newly
emerging Hosta leaves. I have found that a garlic wash used on the leaves does the trick. The only downside is
that you have to re-apply after it has rained.
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| The Willow Tree in September |
When we arrive here in 2004 this willow tree was in some distress.
It was shedding its leaves even in May. We had a specalist look at the tree and he confirmed that it was in trouble.
Pollard the tree was the suggestion and that happened in February 2005 and just look at it now! The tree sits at
the top of the steep bank which is front of the cottage and it is the centre piece of the refurbishment of that bank.
This work continues in about November once we have cleared up all the leaves. The two stone pots were added last year.
There had been similar pots here some 30 or so years ago but they had been removed by a previous owner. These were a
"snip" at a local auction and have been planted up as you can see with geraniums. There are plastic pots inside
the stone one and they are changed three times a year so as to keep the planting looking fresh. It will be the turn
of the winter pots very soon. To age the pots when we got them I painted them with
cow manure. Very messy but it worked.
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| The under gardener at work. |
The under gardener said when we came here one of the most important
aspects of this garden would be the ability to process everying that we removed from the boarders. To this end he set
about purchasing the equipment necessary to quickly compost down everying I take out of the garden. Here you see the
two different kinds of shredders we use as well as the Hipo bag I put everything into till we have time to process it.
This job is done about once a week at the change over period of each of the planting successions. The finely chopped
material is then added to one of the many compost bins that we have.
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| Pride & Joy for the under gardener - compost! |
As you can see we have many bins and they are all in use all the
time. It never ceases to amaze me how it all rots down and ends up being a relatively small amount compared with what we take
up. What is slightly out of shot here in the leaf bin. This is about to be turned out and added to the other bins now
it has rotted down. The "tin man" as I call him disposes of the nasties such as leaf with black spot and bind
weed. Some of the rubbish is considered by the under gardener as not suitable for HIS compost bins so finds its way
to the local tip.
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| Here we have the pristine driveway to nowhere, to be turned into a gravel garde! |
To add extra interest the under gardener suggested
a gravel garden. He felt that this drive way was not used for vehicles and was rather wide for just a path. We
set about, or rather I set about digging holes into the drive with a mattock and planting some plants we had going spare.
Then we waited to see if they would survive. I had read about Beth Chatto's gravel garden and employed the same
method of planting. Big hole, lots of compost and then leave them to it. When it appeared it would be OK I ordered
more plants from the Beth Chatto website. All of them were chosen with care to survive in the conditions they found
themselves in. We had one fatality during the winter. Some of them needed covering for the first few months so
they had plastic buckets and containers over them. Some of these were black and some were white. The whole effect
was to look as though some bizarre chess game was going on!
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| Dobie checks out the goings on. |
The very day the Under Gardener suggested a gravel garden I set to work.
Here you see pots used to space out a few plants that I was going to put into the ground to see if they would survive.
If successful we would then add to the area and finally put a path through the centre. The plants survived, I bought
more, of course, and the amount of self setting that goes on is just wonderful, I get plants for free.
The gravel garden was much commended by Roy Lancaster when
he judged the garden for the Shropshire Star "Garden of the year" competition. It has made quite an impact
with many of our visitors and is the area of the garden that generates the most questions. It is
continuing to develope very well and I am adding extra plants for summer 2010.
| High Summer 2007 |
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| A view of part of the gravel garden looking towards the long boarders. |
This lovely tree you see in the centre of the picture has in the
last two years become very sick. According to the RHS the problem is with the wet summers we have had, and it is not
a very long lived genus. There are three such trees in the village and they are all dieing off. We had removed
some of the dead stems and found that they were totally waterlogged and it has looked increasingly poorly sick during the
summer of 09. The latest is that at the end of January 2010 it is being taken down as it is now officially
deceased. I am now doing a good deal of research to find a suitable replacement for this summer's opening.
