Weekly catch up with garden & propagation

This week in the garden with Cathy

Spring is reaching a peak with the exuberance of summer just around the corner, the garden is changing daily. Daffodils and tulips have made way for alliums, camassia and eremurus, roses are flowering and the bearded iris have begun their show.

This week we’ve been joined by Matthew, a horticultural apprentice at Capel Manor. We started the week finishing off weeding, edging and editing in the Water Garden. Matthew pruned a large forsythia, which had finished flowering, to reduce the size and keep a nice structure for next year’s blooms.

Now bergenias have finished flowering we deadhead them, they have a lovely green glossy texture for summer interest.

The big job this mid-week was to change over our two large pot displays. We helped Emily take out the half-hardy plants from the greenhouse first. Plants that had not survived or thrived over winter were removed, and new potting mix was added to the pots. We then chose a mixture of pelargoniums, salvias, plectranthus and begonias among other plants to make a new display that will look good over summer and into autumn.

The Gravel Garden has a full sun aspect, with the pots all full of sun loving plants.

On Beth’s patio under the magnolia the pots are a mixture of shade loving and some suited to sunnier positions.

We finished off by making a nettle tea that can be used to feed the pots over the coming months.

The week was finished off with a euphorbia identification with Head of Horticulture Steve. We had a walk through the Garden to identify different species and cultivars. One stem from each plant was cut, as we went to make a test for ourselves and the nursery team, to help learn all the varieties - definitely a challenge as there are so many different varieties grown.