This post is about doing stuff in the garden, rather than showing the finished job.
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| The grass garden with most of the grasses taken down. Only the stipa plumes still to be done. The Pheasant grass isn't cut down. |
The main winter jobs are of course the clearing of leaves and small branches from the beds and lawns, pruning the fruit trees, pruning and pinning up the roses, taking down the wildflowers and cutting down or cutting back all perennial plants - with a few exceptions.
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| Stipa gigantia with about 40% of the plumes cut back. |
The most amount of work among the perennials are the grasses, which are taken down in February or March. The most time-consuming are Stipa Gigantea which have around 100 long plumes that must be cut down individually into their still green base. The green base is then 'combed through' to drag out any dead grasses.
Pheasant grass is almost as time-consuming, as it's not cut down but the dead fronds must be cut out individually.
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| Pheasant grass (Anamanthele lessoniana stipa) |
The most skilfull job is the pinning up of the rambling roses on the flint wall and on the plum tree. Katya does to this in a day, and the result is a beautiful tracery
Katya working on Mme Alfred Carriere
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| The delicate tracery of rose stems on the eastern wall The other major job for which I have help is taking down the wildflower area. This actually happens in two stages, with Bruce cutting them down in the autumn and leaving the cuttings to drop theirs seeds. Then in March, the area can be cleared to bare earth and fresh plug plants planted in the gaps |
Bruce using a brushcutter to finally clear the wildflower area
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| The squares round the fruit trees being weeded and grape hyacinths resown |
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| The fruit tree squares weeded and the fruit trees pruned by Bruce |
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| Finally, some edging |
