Last week I was allowed back in to do essential tasks. It was glorious! Throughout the hot weather, the custodians had kept everything watered, and even planted more seedlings. The cherry blossom was out, the tulips looking great, the salad monstrously huge! The essential maintenance plan looks a little like this. To tackle the lawns, we are going to mow the orchard regularly but on a high setting. We had planned a long grass area for the lower lawn, this will be expanded now, and where we do mow, we will experiment with wavy patterns (a subtle hint to the large pond that used to be there). The Hall borders are an opportunity to experiment with different design and layouts for paths, so I will be mowing in the paths from historic plans we have and sharing photos of how this looks. This will link to questionnaires and consultation we will be carrying out on this area, with a view to creating a design plan.
This week I have been taking inspiration from one of our previous garden exhibits and digging for victory! The veg beds that we built over winter as part of the Orchard redevelopment, were starting to fill with weeds and I couldn’t bear to see all the hard work go to waste! So, I quickly sowed thousands of seeds in the six large beds: kale, chard, salad, carrots, beetroot, peas, and Canadian wonder beans. Then, with the other fifteen beds that we had stripped in between the Orchard trees, I planted row after row of potatoes (Linda, Pink Gypsy, Pink Fir apple). The hope is that all these vegetables will fill the space, and prevent perennial weeds setting up base camp in our garden!