20/4/10 - 7 hours
I'm back at Knightshayes after a fortnight's break over the Easter holidays, and what a difference those two weeks have made. Before I went away the weather was atrocious and very little was out in the gardens, although some plants were hinting at things to come. But today the Church Path was a cacophony of colour, with azaleas, rhododendrons, scillas, wood anemones and many others all vying for visitors' attention. And there were plenty of visitors too, with plenty of questions being fired at us. 
I must have an approachable face because several visitors grabbed me to ask questions - the most popular one being how many people work in the gardens - a difficult one to answer at the moment, although apparently they have found a replacement for Paul (who left last Friday) and a new head gardener too. Change is afoot...It was a beautiful scene in the gardens today, the sun shining down through the trees. I walked down to the shed with Claire, the newest volunteer,
meeting Dave on the way down, who told us to grab trowels and hand forks and head for Church Path for some weeding. We met Jude and Lucy and headed off to find our patch, which was off to the right of the lawn at the end of Church Path. The bed was in a sorry state, riddled with Phytophthora and hence many of the plants (mostly conifers) looked rather poorly, if not outright dead. A group of Mahonia fortunei had only two survivors as the others had been infected and died.
Kaye thought it would probably best to propagate those conifers still showing signs of life and to then strip the bed clear of plants (except several Acers that seemed unaffected), mulch it and then replant with the propagated plants. The bed is also pretty dry because of the large trees nearby (and of course the recent run of sunny weather), making conditions less than ideal.We weeded among the few plants that had survived, leaving in some lovely dark-leaved violets and a few other low-growing plants. It was hot and thirsty work as the trees' leaves haven't yet opened out, and so there was no sunbreak.
On the way up to lunch I took lots of photos of everything that's coming out, all of which are here. Here are some of my favourites:
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