Weekly catchup with garden and propagation

This week in the Garden

with Mattie

After a hot start to the week we were grateful to have some slightly cooler temperatures to get round to those sunny jobs. 

The Gravel Garden has had a refresh, with the pruning of cistus shrubs, deadheading buddleias and lavenders. The weeds despite no rain are still coming up so we've been easing them out ahead of the symposium as we want the Gravel Garden to look its best! 

Heading down into the Water Garden for cooler temperatures and shade, the plants here are reacting to the heat but doing much better than in the exposed areas of the garden. We've been cutting back ferns which have collapsed and leaving them on the ground as cover. Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae have been deadheaded, edges have been weeded of Ragwort and grass and dead leaves of hostas removed.

We've had intern Jamie back and also new this week is Emma whose been studying at Dublin Botanic Gardens who will be with us for two weeks. It's been brilliant to have such skillful extra help!

I've been organising the plants and materials following my Long Border at the RHS Sandringham Flower Show, where plants are going to be reused for show displays, planted out in the garden or sold in the nursery. You can read all about it and the plants on the blog on our website. We've put up a new habitat pile using the material I had for my piles at the show, creating space for wildlife to forage, nest and hide from over the coming seasons. Niwaki have also very kindly donated the tools in my show to the gardening team and we can't wait to get working with them!

We hope you keep cool over the next few hot days! Until next time.

This week in propagation

with Rob

It's been an incredible week down in the growing department. I've only recently returned to the propagation nation from my honeymoon, and although it's difficult to compare a water bottle in the polytunnel with a negroni on the beach, it's genuinely great to be back, and to see so much brilliant work going on!

Often we have to adapt and make bold choices working in horticulture, and this extends to our infrastructure. Recently, such a decision was made, to reduce our second polytunnel, turning it into a new area to hold our pot stock. Callum and Ben did a superb job in facilitating this.

Elsewhere, PJ, who when not being a hero on site, is a plant molecular physiologist, provided a talk regarding the carbon capture research he's been working on with the University of Essex. It was fascinating!

Keeping ourselves at the forefront of academic research is as important to us as the everyday jobs which keep us occupied. Research such as PJ's is undoubtedly the future of our industry, and forms the basis of how we will adapt to the rapidly changing environment in respect to sustainability and ecology.

Richard, Olly, Greg and Jamie have been getting their boots muddy, or perhaps dusty is a better word due to this prolonged period of drought, down in the stockbeds. When not lifting and dividing plants, the guys embrace the routine, keeping these areas weed free, tending and examining the health of our ground stock plants.

Jamie did get his fork out to lift a clump of Bistorta tenuicaulis, which hails from the moist wooded, shady banks of Japan. It's a tidy, low growing perenial, with creeping rhizomes, best used as groundcover in the garden. In the spring it gifts spikes of white flower.

Greg and Emma spent a day with Emily, where flavour of the day was pelargoniums! We've amassed a diverse collection of this patron favourite genus, and each year it's one of Emily's joys to take cuttings from the mother plants, which will form the stock we have to sell next year.

It's a challenging time, with rain still not on the horizon, but the team have been dilligent in their watering duties, and as you can see, if it be outside or inside our tunnels, our plants are in exceptional health. Still, we would love to see some frightening clouds darken our skies please. Seriously. Please. Soak us.