Garden work this week

The Jubilee weekend is nearly here and we are working to make sure the gardens are as good as possible for our visitors. The bunting is going up, cakes have been made in batches of 10s, the stallholders have all been allocated space and our new teatowel to commemorate the event should arrive today.

In the gardens the lush green grass has got the better of our medium sized mower which has given up unexpectedly so we have hired one for the week, we are planting out vegetables, annuals and herbaceous plants as fast as time allows. We are also looking ahead to make sure the colour continues well in the summer after the June rush.  The wisteria and irises are in full bloom and birds and bees are busy around their nests.  Steve is in the shade in the woodland walk doing battle with the weeds but at least he has the consolation of seeing how fine our Solomon’s Seal looks this year.

One combination that particularly struck me today was the hawthorn with alliums growing right up against it.



We look forward to seeing all our visitors old and new on Sunday and Monday. A full list of activities is available on the website.

Arriving Swallows

This awesome picture of a swallow returning to feed its young was taken by my husband Fred, two summers ago. In the top right hand corner of the picture you can see a U-shaped cut in the door. This is how we let the swallows in and out of the sheds throughout the gardens to breed.

When we first started work to the gardens there was only one nesting pair left. Now there are 4 pairs. We have also become an important staging post for swallows moving south. In September the sky explodes with swallows and house martins feeding in the tops of the big trees in the gardens and park or diving low over the meadows and the little river.
Yesterday, for the first time, we saw this phenomenon  in the Spring. Clouds of swallows fed over the gardens all day. Very exciting for us and a lifeline for migrating birds.

The last 24 hours in pictures. 'Its the difficult ones that are worth the raising.'

What a difference a day makes! This was the gloomy picture last night.
 


And today I am gardening in bright sunshine…



Accompanied by creatures big (Tim and Spot the dog)…

and small..



I have been weeding these… their determined tap roots come out more easily than usual thanks to the saturated ground

and I am replacing them with homegrown scabious, vetch, ox eye daisies and autumn hawkbit.

so that in high summer, they will add to the meadows on the terraces.

This teenage weather is exacting and challenging, producing no visitors while the garden looks perfect. But, as a wise person once told my despairing mother ‘It’s the difficult ones that are worth the raising.’


Just remind me I said that the next time water floods the shop, the office, the gardens….

Top performing tulips flowering now.

Tulips are essential in the Spring. We plant loads of their beautiful chestnutty bulbs every autumn. They can be used for naturalising, for cutting, for pots and in the borders.In late April, the red Apeldoorn tulips look gorgeous in the Cedar meadow and their yellow counterparts are showing in the rose meadow and in the Poppy Borders.

We rely on certain tulips every year. They include Tulipa ‘Carneval de Nice’ (below) and, in the bucket,  ‘Uncle Tom’ in foreground, ‘Carneval de Nice’ behind, ‘Queen of the Night’ and fringed tulip ‘Swan Wings.’ The orange tulip ‘Prinses Irene’ looks lovely with terracotta or ironwork in pots but, as you can see here, works just as well amongst these border auriculas.
   
Tulipa ‘Blueberry Ripple’
This is a cracker. It is the first year we have grown it and we will definitely add it to our favourites. I chatted with Perry Rodriguez at Great Dixter  (via twitter). They grow it  and he sent me a beautiful image of Blueberry Ripple amongst mixed tulips on the table in the house. He suggested it would bed out well with variegated honesty. I agree. You could also try it with variegated perennial wallflowers.

I have included this picture particularly because I think it shows the true colour of this tulip. There is one image that seems to be used across the web and it is suspiciously over ‘blued’.


There is such a huge range of tulips and there are plenty more I would like to try out, all suggestions gratefully received.

Jubilee Planting in Grantham

Last week, The Diamond Grove in Queen Elizabeth Park, Grantham was the setting for a mass snowdrop planting by school children.  We donated snowdrops along with Little Ponton Hall and Belton House. Snowdrops were lifted from here, some of the bulbs returned to the holes and the rest went off to their new home. We look forward to seeing some pictures next year.

March at Easton comes in like a lion….

Last week the winds picked up and typical March weather had arrived. Small bulbs were unaffected by it and made brave showings in the cedar meadow. Coming out now to join the crocuses are Chionodoxa in blues, pinks and white.

New daffodils are showing through every day including the Tenby daffodil (Narcissus obvallaris) (below) and, on the snowdrop bank, an old survivor from pre-restoration, sometimes known as ‘Queen Anne’s Double’. The flowers are stuffed with petals that threaten to bring the whole stem down.

On sunny days (like yesterday) we spot frogs  in the ditch below the snowdrop bank. The weather was so fine that they ignored us to enjoy the heat and were splashing and croaking in the puddles. The grey wagtail has returned to the river where we can watch his bobbing flight with ease.
The hellebores are at their best now. Most of our hellebores are in the woodland walk where they blend with hyacinths, dogs mercury and golden feverfew. An unusual combination of plants that is well worth seeing.

Heaven Scent

Flowering out in the garden today is our wild violet. They are on a gentle slope of rough limestony ground which the rabbits graze a bit. This image below shows them flowering with cowslips. It gives you an idea of the tiny scale of these ground hugging plants. The scent is completely out of proportion to their size. They outsmell all other plants in early spring. A siren call to any insects on the wing on sunny days.

In my kitchen this tiny bunch will scent the whole room for 24 hours.

I have noticed the pollen coming off the Yew trees in great clouds for the first time today. Hay Fever sufferers are often confused by their first attack at this time of year. The Yew tree may be the culprit. When the trees in the Yew Tunne really get going it looks like great clouds of smoke coming out of the centre.