Weekly catch up with garden & propagation

Propagation Team

Miya took a trip down to one of our stockbeds, the infamously named... BATTLE GROUND! It was here Miya planted a healthy clump of Eragrostis curvula. This grass forms tussocks of very narrow leaves, over-topped in late summer-autumn with delicate curved sprays of tiny flowers fading to pale fawn. It's a beautiful thing. 

Eragrostis curvula

Debs and Miya have spent much of the week working on hardwood cuttings. Several vitis varities have begun their growing journey and are standing proud within our propagation house. One of these is the strawberry vine, Vitis 'Fragola'. This might be familiar to visitors of our nursery in the autumn as it fruits on the south wall of our shop. We encourage people to taste and appreciate the unusual flavour of this fruit, just as Beth loved to do.

Vitis 'Fragola'

Vitis coignetiae

Another plant propagated via hardwood cutting this week was Ribes sanguineum 'Albescens', a plant also very special to Beth, as you discover when reading Beth Chatto's Shade Garden. 'For me the scent of flowering currant, Ribes sanguineum 'Albescens', is part of the awakening garden. I like to pick long, curving branches just as the flower buds begin to swell. I bruise the stem ends, put them into a large jug with a few pieces of Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae and stand it on a low table by a glass door opening on to my outdoor sitting area'.

Ribes sanguineum 'Albescens'

Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae 

Debs and Kirsten also got busy with several of our sisyrinchium varieties. I love how they all look in their plug trays! A favourite of these varieties is Sisyrinchium 'Dragon's Eye', with its striking colour variation, white, almost lilac flowers, but sporting deep purple veins and central ring. 

 Sisyrinchium 'Dragon's Eye'

Elsewhere, the whole team has been making inroads into our end of the year chores, and of course, picking and packing your orders which we are so thankful for.

Garden Team

We were fortunate to escape the worst of the bad weather brought by storm Bram early in the week, but the tail end did bring down most of the remaining oak leaves across the garden.

In the Gravel Garden we remove as many leaves as possible from the paths and steps but also from the beds. We want to clear these away here as leaving them creates an unwanted thick mulch on beds.

The leaves collected here are not wasted. We use as much as possible around the garden, like spreading them on the beds where we removed large shrubs last week. Here they are a welcome mulch, covering the bare soil and suppressing weeds.

Moving to the Woodland Garden, the cutting back continues as we prepare the space for emerging bulbs and early flowers. We remove hellebore leaves to reveal flower buds, cut back old epimedium leaves that can conceal the new flowers and fresh foliage, and cut ferns back to their crowns with the new fronds (croziers) curled up and ready to unfurl come spring. Here the leaves are gathered so we can weed the edges of the paths before going back on the beds or added to the compost.

We finished the week in the prop shed making Christmas wreaths. An annual tradition and a lovely way to end the year. I like to think it's the gardens way of giving us back a small reward for all our hard work throughout the year.