Well my goodness… where on Earth has March gone? January, February and indeed March always seem to plod along so slowly, and now it’s almost April; nothing to do with getting old, I trust? I’m only twenty six…! What…?
Well its been a pretty busy March here in the garden. We dug out a hideous line of scratchy conifers at the beginning of the month, which I pretended weren’t there when I designed the garden two years ago. Their removal was an immediate and vast improvement, but their absence revealed that we didn’t have anything in place to delineate the boundary with our neighbours, a mind-boggling three metres above us. We (eventually) found a brave/stupid (please delete as appropriate) fencing contractor who completed the job perfectly in a couple of days. Fences completed, the baton was passed back to us fairly swiftly to commence the mammoth task of painting the fourteen metre stretch.
Hard landscaping completed (I now know why they call it ‘hard’ landscaping, cause it’s bloody hard work!), we set about the ‘fun’ part… planting (it’s obligatory to use the word ‘fun’ when referring to planting).
An old nursing home on our easterly boundary needed softening, sorry no, not softening, hiding… completely! It’s fair to say this building is somewhat architecturally challenged! As such, three bare-root Pyrus ‘Red Spire’ were duly planted to help screen aforementioned monstrosity and under-planted with two tree-ferns (Dicksonia antarctica), Skimmia ‘Fragrant Cloud’, zesty, lime-green Cornus flavarimea and three regal ferns (Osmunda regalis). Further along the fence (to the left in the picture above) three Catalpa bignoniodes ‘Nana’ add height and structure in front of another part of the Great Fence of China (in Bournemouth). These beautiful standard trees can be pollarded in late winter/early spring which will then, in turn reward with super sized, fresh green foliage… watch this space. Further along still, I’ve planted an Eleagnus ‘Quicksilver’ (which I first saw when I was working with Carol Klein at Glebe Cottage). It’s a breathtaking deciduous shrub, quite unlike the evergreen eleagnus most of us are familiar with. It sparkling silver foliage will look perfect backed by the mid-grey of the fence.
So in terms of general garden maintenance this month, as if the above were not enough:
Dahlias & Abyssinian bananas (Ensete ventricosum ‘Maurellii’) have been started back into growth. The term ‘started back into growth’ is a technical gardening term for… ‘watered’!
Lawn restoration work has started. I’d never been a lawn ‘anorak’, until our new lawn was laid two years ago. Now I’m an ‘anorak in training’. And as such it’s time to start scarifying and aerating lawns. Scarification is the back-breaking process of removing thatch (dead grass) from the lawn. I started this operation by hand with a spring-tine rake (for an hour) and then hobbled along to Homebase, hands clutching the small of my back, and treated myself to a fabulous, new electric one. Aerating is getting oxygen down to the grass roots through plunging a garden fork repeatedly across the lawn. Another backbreaker, for which I don’t possess an electrical slave! Is it too early to put this on the Christmas list?
Tree ferns have been released from their winter ‘wrap-up’. Tree ferns need their crowns protecting from pro-longed periods of cold as they’re not fully hardy. I stuff the crowns (the growing point at tree top of the trunk) with straw and wrap horticultural fleece around the base of the fronds for extra cosiness. I’ll be keeping a close eye on the weather forecast over the next few weeks though and will rush out with hot toddies should the temperature drop to below -5°C (the hot toddies are for me, the tree ferns will make do with the straw and fleece).
And in other news:
Deciduous grasses (miscanthus, calamagrostis and panicum) have all been cut down to about 15cm (that’s 5″ in old money).
Penstemons have been cut back to where the new growth is growing away.
Hydrangea paniculatas have been pruned back by half.
Trays and trays of seeds have been sowed (tithonia, cosmos and ricinus), and finally
Bucket loads of weeding
Tune back in next month for an exhausting list of April jobs.
MIKE THE GARDENER 