Welcome to the sixth of our new series of blogs featuring the photos and sightings of wildlife in the garden (and our outreach sites like Chattowood) by our staff.
Weekly catch up with garden & propagation
POSTED 31st July 2025
Garden Team
After a couple of intermittently rainy weeks, everything is bulking up rapidly in the garden, including the weeds!
This week we’ve finished working through the Gravel Garden with the help of intern Freya Willetts who’s joining us for three weeks.
We’ve edited self seeders and runners like Verbascum bombyciferum, origanum, Bupleurum falcatum and Pilosella aurantiaca, to keep their numbers manageable. In order to decide what stays or goes, we have to keep in consideration the eventual size of each plant, their individual lifespan (annual, biennial, perennial), their competitiveness, the overall picture we want to paint, and the seasonality with different plant succession in one given spot.
While some self seeded plants will be lifted to be used by the propagation team, such as Anemanthele lessoniana, others will go on to our in-house compost.
We’ve also spent time pruning a few shrubs. Cistus were given a light prune now that they’ve flowered. Cotoneaster franchetii, with its arching habit, was lifted to reveal the understory of Geranium macrorrhizum and give space for the hylotelephium and euphorbia to grow.
The old drive, that used to create a heavy visual barrier of large evergreen shrubs between the Gravel Garden and Water Garden, was replanted with a younger and more suitable mix of shrubs and understory in the spring. More plants will be added in the autumn when temperatures will be cooler to avoid watering them too often. In the meantime, with large areas of bare soil, the weeds are growing rapidly and need to be pulled regularly.
The Gravel Garden looks much refreshed once weeded and is still buzzing with insects. Now is the time for grasses and softer yellow colours, with agapanthus, verbena and oenothera as accent plants, while the Koelreuteria paniculata tree steals the show with its delicate yellow flowers.
Propagation Team
It's been a super productive week down in the growing department.
Potting Team - Kathy and Lelia have created fields of future treasures which we await with bated breath. Every single one of our plants are potted by hand, no machines here! Every plant is placed with many years of experience behind them, ensuring each plant has the best start in fulfilling their individual potential. This is something we are incredibly proud of.
Tunnel Team - Mel, Annie and myself, when not releasing a whole host of new and exciting plants onto our nursery and website, have been updating our nursery displays. Whilst Hollie has been busy picking the very best of the bunch for our online orders, which as always we are very grateful for.
Propagation - Debs and Emily deal with many different plants every single week. One of these this week was Cistus x skanbergii, the dwarf pink rock rose. It's a darling compact evergreen shrub with narrow, grey-green leaves and pale pink flowers. It thrives in full sun and light, well drained soil. It's a charming addition to the garden. Head to our website to be notified when it's ready for sale.
Elsewhere, Sean and Pete have been off on the stock beds handling some of our largest grasses, sprucing up the stock bed and keeping things manageable. Emily taught a superb dry flower class on Wednesday, before setting up with Miya, Freya and Sybille to do our yearly bulb chipping.
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