with Rob
Tina, Kirsten and Debs, or who I like to call Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, have drawn their blades, well their snips, and have gone to town on those plants who have reached the point in the year when they need a little off the top. I scurried around between them, a sort of d'Artagnan figure, chopping at things and bringing some gorgeous new plants over to the nursery.
One of the key genera whose numbers have just sky rocketed is our bergenia collection. 'Tubby Andrews' (coincidentally, the nickname of my best friend in primary school) is just the top of the iceberg-enia, as we currently have fifteen different varieties to pick from! Beth famously loved to use this plant on corners, with those waxy cuticles bouncing light fantastic!
Kathy has been reigning supreme over on the potting bench, with a whole host of new treasures now growing on in our polytunnel, such as Eryngium pandanifolium 'Physic Purple', Helianthemum 'Henfield Brilliant', and Bupleurum fruticosum. Head of Horticulture Steve says that the latter is rather unusual, as it's a shrubby member of the umbellifer family.
Elsewhere, I administered some parasitic wasps in our poly tunnels. We proudly do not use insecticides, so keeping a healthy balance in our enclosed areas between beneficial and those less friendly to our plants is an important part of growing under plastic.
Jack has been picking plants for your orders, which we are all grateful for. Pete and Kiran have been packing them securely as they make the next step in their growing journey... to your gardens!
Finally, it's time to say farewell to Jana (please note the vital comma.) Jana has spent two weeks with Emily, Debs and Richard, gaining further experience in propagating from divisions, seedlings and cuttings. Jana is an absolute joy to work with, and each of us wish her the most fondest of farewells as she embarks on her next adventure!
It’s my last week in the garden as I’ve reached the end of my traineeship, which has absolutely whizzed by! I’ve had such a brilliant time gardening with the team, I’ll really miss them and this wonderful garden.
On the weekend we welcomed back our wonderful crew of past interns for a day of gardening and eating together! We started off with coffee and cake, then headed out to do a mass weeding of the stockbeds. It was a very effective way of clearing the site while being able to catch up with each other.
Malin cooked us delicious hotdogs and the Interns got to enjoy being in the garden and having tours of the nursery by Emily. The Willow room was decorated beautifully by the team with flowers cut from the garden and tealights. We enjoyed scrumptious hot soup by Malin and we did a presentation about our year in the garden. It’s a great way to thank our interns and for them to meet others who have spent time with us in the garden.
This week we welcomed two new interns Lily and Milou who have been a fantastic help this week! We’ve been planting up the area we cleared last week with plants such as Pachysandra terminalis ‘Green Sheen', Epimedium x versicolor ‘Discolor’, Dryopteris erythrosora, Gillenia trifoliata, Kirengeshoma palmata, and Rodgersia pinnata ‘Superba’.
We’ve signalled to Beth’s planting palette by choosing some variegated plants, like Hosta fortunei ‘Gold Standard' and Persicaria virginiana Variegated Group which in this dark corner really bring some light to the border. We’ve been dotting in more colchicums and also Anemone nemorosa ‘Sibermowe’ with its beautiful pale lilac-blue flowers. We give it just one water using water from the ponds, then we’ve been mulching with our own compost to lock in the moisture.
We’ve then returned to Chattowood for our monthly gardening day there, removing all the weeds that have grown recently with the rain and thinking about what we could plant in potential gaps that have opened up in the near future.
Sadly, it’s now time to say goodbye to Beth Chatto's. I’ve written a piece about my year in this incredible garden which you can read HERE. Thanks so much to the team for having me!
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