I would like to start this post by once again saying a massive thank you to everyone that I met, stayed with and worked with whilst I was away. I wont name you all individually for fear of missing someone out, but you know who you are and I am forever grateful for all time that you gave me.
After circumnavigating the globe and flying well over 22,000 miles the time has come for me to get back into the groove here at Mottisfont. This is made harder by the fact that the UK seems to be getting all the rainfall for the entire northern hemisphere and there isn't much of a let up on the horizon. It really is causing us serious problems, however I will stop moaning about it because there are people who are in a much worse situation than us and I hope they will be able to rebuild their lives after the floods have receded.
The main job going on at the moment is rose pruning which will continue for many more weeks to come. We are currently working on the wall roses in the Central Garden, once these are complete we will move into the beds and make a start on the shrub roses. I'm presuming that this is going to be quite a popular subject so I will do a separate post dedicated entirely to the pruning of roses.
I was quite looking forward to getting back to Mottisfont and having a good look round the whole estate as there had been a great deal of work going on whilst I was away. The countryside department had been dealing with the fallen trees and all the problems that are created when they come down. This has been a mammoth task and is still on going. Victoria who is our diploma student has been over seeing the renovation of the herbaceous borders and I returned to the garden to find that the team had done an incredible amount of work - all the plants lifted from the top two borders and the ground has been completely dug over in preparation for planting this spring. Well done team!! A happy coincidence is that I missed out on all the back breaking digging this year. What a shame!
Keep your eyes peeled for a pruning specific post soon.
