Weekly catch up with garden & propagation

Garden Team

After a few weeks with no notable rainfall, on Sunday we had a thunderstorm that brought a very welcome 18mm to the garden. On Monday, with the air a little fresher, we headed to Chattowood to give the site a quick weed. It was great to witness ground nesting bees digging in the sand. 

On Tuesday Scott took a large group of visitors to meet our pigs. They are helping to clear an area of new land beyond the Water Garden as part of an ongoing development of the garden as a whole.

We moved on to the Reservoir Garden and started to remove all of the opium poppy - Papaver somniferum, that had finished flowering and before they set too much seed. This is a beautiful annual that looked great earlier in the season, but now it's finished, we take away the spent stems to leave room for the perennials to fill the space. We collect the seed for sale and also dry the seedheads to make a display.

We finished the week in the ponds, clearing blanket weed, but more urgently, removing the flowers of Thalia dealbata. Although very attractive, the flower can sometimes trap wasps and hoverflies. So we take them away, leaving behind the impressive blue-green leaves standing tall in their place.

Propagation Team

With the sun still shining and a touch of much needed rain over the weekend, the production team has been hard at work, making sure we can continue bringing Beth’s Garden to Yours.

Emily, along with our head of horticulture Steve, spent the day caring for Beth’s beloved pelargoniums giving them a bit of love and a good spruce up. Pelargoniums are perfect for adding a splash of summer colour to your patio pots, and you can even take cuttings to grow more for next year!

Meanwhile, down on the stock beds, Sean and Miya have been busy dividing plants like bergenia, grasses and geranium, all of which will be available for purchase later this year.

In the growing tunnels, Hannah and Hollie have been checking root health and tending to a wide variety of plants. With so many new varieties coming through, be sure to keep an eye on the website for your favourites. Some plants root in as little as four weeks, while others take up to two years before they’re ready for sale, so we make plant health and maintenance a top priority.

As always, Kathy and Lelia have been carefully potting up our beautiful cuttings and seedlings with their usual attention to detail.

Over with the estate team, Ned and Ben have been giving the seed tunnel a much needed makeover and even helped us install a new herb sign at the nursery.

We had Sarah from Benton End come to spend a day with propagation expert Emily to help with some seed cleaning and we also had some help from intern Alfie help with some pricking out seedlings.