The Sarcococca and I stared at each other. I brandished my secateurs; it puffed itself up just a little more. Dave said this was not a time for "ladies' pruning" and that we were to go in deep. So I did. But it's hard to know where to prune for fear of leaving large holes in the shrub, especially after the heavy snow that has forced a lot of the growth downwards. Still, I managed to cut it back a fair bit and it looked pretty even.
With the sleet turning to snow we were all glad of a restorative cuppa, and afterwards went into the glade to cut back hydrangeas. Some had succumbed to the frost at their tips, but all had lots of new buds appearing. I should have worn thicker gloves, as my fingers were frozen stiff by the time lunch came - something to remember next week.
Throughout the site there are signs of life among the plants, which is extremely cheering. The snowdrops look beautiful and the crocuses are about to flower - one tree on the lawn is surrounded by a circle of them and it looks lovely. Other bulbs are working their way up - still only one daffodil out so far but the rest are almost there, and what look like grape hyacinths too. Many deciduous trees have buds at their tips, some of which are just about to break out, and many of the camellias have begun to flower. But the star of the show today is a glorious Witch Hazel, Hamamelis mollis 'Pallida', which is covered in yellow flowers that you can smell long before you see them. On a gloomy day like today the flowers seem to glow; the whole effect being quite jaw-dropping as you round the corner and see the tree.
Lunch was a jolly affair in the walled garden mess room - Lorraine had met some financial target and so Paul had bought lots of cakes. It's much warmer and brighter in there than it is in our shed, so it was a struggle to leave and put our soggy coats back on. Unfortunately the afternoon's task was to dig up the brambles in the bed to the right of the terraces, and down to the woods beside the ha-ha. The rain didn't abate, and by the end of it we were rather soggy and fed up, although we did manage to get a lot of brambles up. There was quite a lot of fungi around, including a whitish bracket fungus on a fallen log and an orangey brown mushroom in among the leaf litter. I meant to bring some home with me but I left my sample down in the woods.
7.5 hours
Tuesday 23 February 2010
Friday 19 February 2010
Rose: 0; Me: 1 (just)
Well, the deceased climbing rose certainly put up a good fight, no doubt about it. My hands, neck and face are now covered in scratches and I'm rather glad I had my tetanus booster last year.
It had pretty much done what was required of it, ie climbed up and surrounded the nearest tree, a large Scots Pine. It had got pretty far up, in fact. But then it had evidently become infected with a fungus, a bracket type that could be seen growing at its base. There was still the odd green branch here and there, but the rose was to all intents and purposes deader than a very dead thing. However this meant that the branches snapped all too easily, making the job rather difficult. As many were interwoven, it was very difficult to extract branches without whipping oneself in the face (not a good idea given how thorny it was) or pulling down the entire ball of twigs. Ivy and a nearby Escallonia that had both grown through the rose's branches added to the difficulties, and so the whole job took considerably longer than expected. I was tasked with cutting back the Escallonia while I was there, but in the end I didn't have time.
I was interested to see Paul's job has been advertised on Horticulture Week, and I was somewhat disappointed at the (seemingly) low salary - £19-19.5k - for the knowledge and experience required. This is what the industry is notorious for, but it comes at the same time as Tim Smit criticises the National Trust, RHS et al for paying their gardeners too little. Smit is right, although he's got a bit of a cheek as Eden's basic horticulture salaries aren't anything to write home about either, but it's a debate that needs to happen. The problem seems to stem from the fact that people feel the gardening they see done in NT or RHS gardens is the same as they do at home, and so doesn't require any specialist knowledge. Well, obviously it does. Punters wouldn't be very impressed if they asked a gardener what he or she was planting and received "I dunno, I'm just sticking it in the ground" as a response. Large gardens such as Knightshayes need seasonal planning, maintenance and development, and this requires specialist knowledge. Industry head honchos whine about not getting any new blood into horticulture, but who's going to go for a job that pays barely more than minimum wage, even when you've got five years' experience and a degree under your belt? Not to mention the perception of horticulture in schools - it's the remedial option. If I'd said I wanted to go into horticulture when I was at school, I'd have been sneered at by my careers officer. It just isn't considered a viable option for anyone with half a brain, and this is something the industry and schools have to work together to change. I also hope that the Eden Project and its ilk inspire schoolchildren to consider horticulture, whether inadvertently or directly.
Speaking of Eden, I was very pleased to receive a phone call from Mark Paterson, our practical week contact, confirming my work placement there and at the nurseries this summer. Now I just have to sort out a fortnight at Heligan and that's my summer sorted. I am dead chuffed!
5 hours
It had pretty much done what was required of it, ie climbed up and surrounded the nearest tree, a large Scots Pine. It had got pretty far up, in fact. But then it had evidently become infected with a fungus, a bracket type that could be seen growing at its base. There was still the odd green branch here and there, but the rose was to all intents and purposes deader than a very dead thing. However this meant that the branches snapped all too easily, making the job rather difficult. As many were interwoven, it was very difficult to extract branches without whipping oneself in the face (not a good idea given how thorny it was) or pulling down the entire ball of twigs. Ivy and a nearby Escallonia that had both grown through the rose's branches added to the difficulties, and so the whole job took considerably longer than expected. I was tasked with cutting back the Escallonia while I was there, but in the end I didn't have time.
I was interested to see Paul's job has been advertised on Horticulture Week, and I was somewhat disappointed at the (seemingly) low salary - £19-19.5k - for the knowledge and experience required. This is what the industry is notorious for, but it comes at the same time as Tim Smit criticises the National Trust, RHS et al for paying their gardeners too little. Smit is right, although he's got a bit of a cheek as Eden's basic horticulture salaries aren't anything to write home about either, but it's a debate that needs to happen. The problem seems to stem from the fact that people feel the gardening they see done in NT or RHS gardens is the same as they do at home, and so doesn't require any specialist knowledge. Well, obviously it does. Punters wouldn't be very impressed if they asked a gardener what he or she was planting and received "I dunno, I'm just sticking it in the ground" as a response. Large gardens such as Knightshayes need seasonal planning, maintenance and development, and this requires specialist knowledge. Industry head honchos whine about not getting any new blood into horticulture, but who's going to go for a job that pays barely more than minimum wage, even when you've got five years' experience and a degree under your belt? Not to mention the perception of horticulture in schools - it's the remedial option. If I'd said I wanted to go into horticulture when I was at school, I'd have been sneered at by my careers officer. It just isn't considered a viable option for anyone with half a brain, and this is something the industry and schools have to work together to change. I also hope that the Eden Project and its ilk inspire schoolchildren to consider horticulture, whether inadvertently or directly.
Speaking of Eden, I was very pleased to receive a phone call from Mark Paterson, our practical week contact, confirming my work placement there and at the nurseries this summer. Now I just have to sort out a fortnight at Heligan and that's my summer sorted. I am dead chuffed!
5 hours
Tuesday 9 February 2010
Sunny days are here again (praise be)
After a parky start which featured me pressing snooze repeatedly, I zoomed up the A396 like a bat out of hell (well, as much as is possible in an aged Peugeot 106, so more like a bat out of Bournemouth), enjoying the sunshine lighting up the Exe valley. This is the first time in months that it's been decent weather for my Tuesday foray to Bolham, and what a difference it makes.
Today's first task was to finish off my hazel hurdle rose training efforts, so I wandered down to the hazels in the copse to find some nice long and straight branches to chop down. I am suffering from chilblains at the moment and so my attempts to saw were punctuated with swearing, which hopefully nobody heard. Finally I had my three choice branches and dragged them back through to the terraces. I was pretty pleased with my hazel hurdles, and once I'd won the battle with the last one (they put up a damn good fight against being bent into the ground) and tied in the last rose stem, the effect was rather pleasing.
Once I'd (re-)covered my tracks with manure, I was tasked with digging over the rosebeds where Lucy and Christina had been pruning the day before. This is fairly back-breaking stuff, even with the short forks we were using, and I was glad when the call to tea came. No respite after break, however, and so we carried on clearing up the prunings and pulling out bastard bindweed and rose suckers, digging over where we'd been and disentangling ourselves from rosebushes as we went.
Lunch was a shorter affair today; because it was colder everyone was a bit quicker to get up and at 'em outside again to warm up, which we did pretty quickly with our next job: clearing woodland beds of leaf litter and helping the bulbs show through better. We tamed roses that had got ideas above their station, and cursed badgers for chewing shrubs. There was a fair bit of apologising to bulbs for treading on them, too. I have to say I was thoroughly fed up at having to leave everyone to go to work.
The snowdrops are well and truly out now, and are a beautiful sight in their clumps and swathes throughout the gardens. They are being joined by crocuses now, and the odd daffodil here and there (though these last are being somewhat reticent). The birds are everywhere, fighting for territory and singing as if their lives depended on it. Good to see a lot of Goldfinches and Long-tailed Tits in the gardens today.
Kay has found a task for me for next Tuesday: chopping down a climbing rose that went off to meet its maker many years ago and which is just hanging around the base of a lovely Scots Pine.
5 hours
Today's first task was to finish off my hazel hurdle rose training efforts, so I wandered down to the hazels in the copse to find some nice long and straight branches to chop down. I am suffering from chilblains at the moment and so my attempts to saw were punctuated with swearing, which hopefully nobody heard. Finally I had my three choice branches and dragged them back through to the terraces. I was pretty pleased with my hazel hurdles, and once I'd won the battle with the last one (they put up a damn good fight against being bent into the ground) and tied in the last rose stem, the effect was rather pleasing.
Once I'd (re-)covered my tracks with manure, I was tasked with digging over the rosebeds where Lucy and Christina had been pruning the day before. This is fairly back-breaking stuff, even with the short forks we were using, and I was glad when the call to tea came. No respite after break, however, and so we carried on clearing up the prunings and pulling out bastard bindweed and rose suckers, digging over where we'd been and disentangling ourselves from rosebushes as we went.
Lunch was a shorter affair today; because it was colder everyone was a bit quicker to get up and at 'em outside again to warm up, which we did pretty quickly with our next job: clearing woodland beds of leaf litter and helping the bulbs show through better. We tamed roses that had got ideas above their station, and cursed badgers for chewing shrubs. There was a fair bit of apologising to bulbs for treading on them, too. I have to say I was thoroughly fed up at having to leave everyone to go to work.The snowdrops are well and truly out now, and are a beautiful sight in their clumps and swathes throughout the gardens. They are being joined by crocuses now, and the odd daffodil here and there (though these last are being somewhat reticent). The birds are everywhere, fighting for territory and singing as if their lives depended on it. Good to see a lot of Goldfinches and Long-tailed Tits in the gardens today.
Kay has found a task for me for next Tuesday: chopping down a climbing rose that went off to meet its maker many years ago and which is just hanging around the base of a lovely Scots Pine.
5 hours
Tuesday 2 February 2010
Back to Knightshayes again, hurrah!
What with assignments, Christmas and several severe weather 'events' (snow), I've not been volunteering at Knightshayes since early December. So it was with not a little excitement that I got out of bed this morning and drove up the Exe valley to Bolham.
The house has a habit of looming out at you when you're least expecting it, and the mist and rain this morning added to the general spooky feel. I recall Paul saying that if we wanted to know how the weather would be, we need only look to the hills in the west; today the hills weren't visible. Nuff said.
As I stomped down to the gardeners' shed I bumped into Kay, who showed us how plant records are kept. Upon checking whether I had my own secateurs (I did), I was taken to help prune the roses in the terrace beds. The roses haven't been pruned for several years, and had thrown out suckers here there and everywhere (including into the terrace above). So once I'd pruned a climbing rose (Rosa racemosa if memory serves) back into a more manageable state, I went off to find some bamboo canes to train them, only to be frogmarched back by Paul, this time armed with a saw, to cut down some hazel branches instead. So off we went, selecting long, straight branches that were not too thick and not too thin, suitable for bending and using as hoops to train the roses. I then made an artistic attempt at hazel hoops, which seemed to go down well with everyone, and tied the rose branches to the hoops. It did look rather nice, even if I do say so myself.
By this point the rain was horizontal so we elected to take an early lunch. It transpires that Paul is leaving to work for Clinton Devon Estates (who own Bicton Arena), which sounds like an interesting mission, and considerably more independent. However the intended new head gardener for Knightshayes was offered another job by another National Trust place and so unless they find someone by the end of April, they will find themselves without a head gardener or an area supervisor for the ornamental gardens. Paul's breadth and depth of knowledge is astounding, so his replacement will have rather large boots to fill.
After lunch, and somewhat cold after sitting in damp clothes for an hour, we headed back out to the roses. Alison and I were charged with pruning a couple of shrub roses, and proceeded a little over-zealously, some might say. Kay managed to hide her horror fairly well, but I think next time I will reign in my maniacal chopping and perhaps go for a light trim instead.
5 hours
The house has a habit of looming out at you when you're least expecting it, and the mist and rain this morning added to the general spooky feel. I recall Paul saying that if we wanted to know how the weather would be, we need only look to the hills in the west; today the hills weren't visible. Nuff said.
As I stomped down to the gardeners' shed I bumped into Kay, who showed us how plant records are kept. Upon checking whether I had my own secateurs (I did), I was taken to help prune the roses in the terrace beds. The roses haven't been pruned for several years, and had thrown out suckers here there and everywhere (including into the terrace above). So once I'd pruned a climbing rose (Rosa racemosa if memory serves) back into a more manageable state, I went off to find some bamboo canes to train them, only to be frogmarched back by Paul, this time armed with a saw, to cut down some hazel branches instead. So off we went, selecting long, straight branches that were not too thick and not too thin, suitable for bending and using as hoops to train the roses. I then made an artistic attempt at hazel hoops, which seemed to go down well with everyone, and tied the rose branches to the hoops. It did look rather nice, even if I do say so myself.
By this point the rain was horizontal so we elected to take an early lunch. It transpires that Paul is leaving to work for Clinton Devon Estates (who own Bicton Arena), which sounds like an interesting mission, and considerably more independent. However the intended new head gardener for Knightshayes was offered another job by another National Trust place and so unless they find someone by the end of April, they will find themselves without a head gardener or an area supervisor for the ornamental gardens. Paul's breadth and depth of knowledge is astounding, so his replacement will have rather large boots to fill.
After lunch, and somewhat cold after sitting in damp clothes for an hour, we headed back out to the roses. Alison and I were charged with pruning a couple of shrub roses, and proceeded a little over-zealously, some might say. Kay managed to hide her horror fairly well, but I think next time I will reign in my maniacal chopping and perhaps go for a light trim instead.
5 hours
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