HAPPY NEW GARDENING YEAR

A mild start to 2019 has seen us eager to make changes and improvements to the garden.  The orchard is bounded on three sides by a native hedge, two sides we planted around ten years ago with a mix of hawthorn, hazel, viburnum and blackthorn and the third adjoins the lane and is mostly hawthorn.    This latter hedge is very sparse at the base, filled most summers by nettles and bracken and cut most years by a man in a tractor with a flail (if we happen to spot him in the village cutting other hedges).    Although this method of hedge cutting gets the job done and instantly “tidies up” a straggly hedge we are never happy with the “chewed ends” on closer inspection.   This is the year to lay the hedge properly, my husband and younger son have made a good start and there are heaps of prunings all across the orchard awaiting disposal.    A bit of clearing up first I think before the next stretch is laid.   We will feel very on view to the walkers of the village  and their dogs for a year or two  but hopefully we will end up with a much thicker hedge with growth all the way from the base rather than just a thicket at the top.  Two more hedges to go in following  years ……

With all this activity going on with the hedge, I have not been idle.    Grass clippings from the orchard have been piled up in the corner underneath the hedge for years and are now well rotted.   This heap is high and could give the dogs a launch pad for escape over the hedge so my task has been to start digging  away this compost and barrow it away to use as a thick  mulch on both the asparagus bed and a new bed filled with autumn flowering plants and grasses.    I have yet to decide whether it is better to fill the barrow too full and do fewer journeys or half fill it and do more – I walked nearly two miles back and forth with a too full barrow one afternoon as it was.

This morning  there is a sharp frost (minus six degrees), so maybe no digging today. However there is plenty to enjoy in the garden with Snowdrops now flowering along with the first Hellebores, Cyclamen and Iris unguicularis.     Winter flowering shrubs are in flower including Viburnum bodnantense Dawn, Lonicera purpusii and Hamamelis, all with a lovely scent.

The garden is open for the National Garden Scheme in June along with others in the village.   There is at least one flower bed that needs a complete overhaul before Spring not to mention the vegetable garden.   No time for slacking!