Weekly catch up with garden and propagation

This week in the Garden

with gardener Scott

After a short break working at Barnsdale Gardens in Rutland, it was great for me to get back to the gardens at Beth's and to meet our intern Dylan from Inner Temple Gardens. He's been a great help in the garden and propagation.

I've been interested to see first hand how the garden has handled the prolonged period of heat and extreme dry of the last fortnight and as expected, the borders are standing up to the testing conditions. Tough resilient plants thriving in the soil and aspect they demand, without any watering, a true testament to the Beth's ethos of right plant, right place.

We began the week setting out our plant ident for visitors. Malin and Dylan gathered a collection of plants that are looking good in the garden now, before filling out Visitor Centre with the display. It's a great learning opportunity for us and our visitors.

Next, we moved through the borders of the outer Reservoir Garden and on to the big central Bulb Bed, weeding and removing spent brown material, and cutting back plants for fresh growth to come through. We found lots of Poke weed seedlings (Phytolacca americana) that needed taking out, but took time to admire the tall flower spikes first.

We then gave Beth's succulent display a tidy, with weeds taking advantage of the cooler, damper spaces between the pots, before moving on to the beds either side of the Scree steps where we removed spent foxgloves and deadheaded both Dahlia merckii and silene. A busy week in the heat.

Enjoy your weekend!

This week in propagation