Man With Rake

Before I get to the main event I wanted to share a little anecdote. "I say - man with rake!"  This is was said by a visitor wishing to get the attention of a gardener in the rose garden, it was a few years ago now and the gardener in question was a colleague of mine who I am sure will be reading this. Many people may be offended if this comment was directed at them from across the garden, but not here, it has gone down in Mottisfont history as one of the funniest comments any of us has ever received. It still makes me smile thinking about it.

Moving on to the serious business of gardening, this past ten days has been really busy for us in the run up to the rose season. I can report that a majority of the wall roses now have at least one bloom fully open with the rest following closely behind. over the next couple of weeks we will see all the wall roses come into full bloom and don't worry you will receive lots of pictures as this happens! The shrub roses are following behind nicely and with plenty of buds over all the plants it is shaping up o be a stunning display.

Above is a picture of the beautiful Viburnum Plicatum 'Mariesii', this is situated in the first section of the Walled Garden known as the Frameyard. There are a few of these planted together to form a large clump and it's huge, in the picture is Matt and he gives a good idea of scale. This is a great plant which gives an amazing display of flowers every year without fail, I mean the whole shrub is literally covered in them. Not only does it flower well but the foliage also produces a beautiful dark 'burnt red' colour in autumn and looks equally as impressive.

Trimming the Irish Yews in the Central Garden has occupied Matt and Myself for a couple of days this week. You may be interested to know that this process is done completely by hand in the traditional way, we use shears and secateurs and take the time to carefully tend to each one. We even go so far as to use a spirit level on the tops to ensure that they are absolutely flat and level, I realise this may sound a bit extreme to some people but it's important to all of us here that they are pruned in this way. Keeping traditional skills alive is a necessary part of the job, it would take a fraction of the time if they were done with machines but in all honesty they wouldn't look half as good. And there really is a great amount of skill in being able to use shears and secateurs properly to produce an even, tightly clipped Yew.

And finally, here we have Victoria and her raised vegetable beds. The salad beds contain Carrot varieties 'Fly away' and 'Trevor', Radish 'Rudi',  Beetroot 'Boltardy', Onion 'Whit Lisbon', Lettuce 'Maureen', 'Rivale' and 'Tantan' and Rocket. Victoria is also producing an ornamental vegetable bed to contain Dwarf French Beans, Chard, Beetroot, Cabbage, Kohlrabi and Parsley. I will keep you updated on the progress of this.