Wharf House Gardener

Three weeks later than usual, our laburnum walk is flowering at its absolute best. The blooms are far, far too high up sadly, because the laburnum walk went unpruned for a good many years before we moved in here. We are trying slowly to renovate the laburnums and hope that, in a few years, we will have a ‘laburnum walk’ worthy of the name!

A bone dry and rather cold April has been followed by what has been, to say the least, a damp May. We’re now at least in a period of sunshine and showers here on the Shropshire/Worcestershire border and the garden is loving it. Just in the last few days we have seen the first iris’ open together with the beautifully delicate polemonium ‘Giant Lilac’. In a week’s time the borders are going to be filled with colour with lupins and alliums now on the brink of flowering. This really is a very lovely time of year and the plants are loving the rain-sun-rain weather pattern. Gardeners on the other hand might prefer to see just a little bit more sun!

We were strolling around the garden yesterday evening, cups of tea in hand, noting all that is still to come. When we reached the Long Borders, we commented that they don’t really ‘get going’ until late May, with lupins and alliums. Then we took a second look. Although nothing (other than the euphorbia) is in flower yet, the borders already look rather lovely. It’s not just that we know that all those fast-growing perennials represent so much promise, it’s that the variety of greens, is itself beautiful. Sometimes we forget that green is a garden colour too!

We’ve had some lousy weather the last few days: rain, hail, high winds and yet more rain. The rain is needed however, as we’ve had an exceptionally dry (if cold) Spring. The rain and wind has battered the garden somewhat of course, particularly the pots of tulips which, together with tree blossom, are the main interest in the garden at the moment.

As I have often mentioned, we garden on heavy clay soil. We’ve found it very difficult therefore to naturalise tulips (any tips very gratefully received!). We’re currently trying to naturalise Tuilpa ‘Springeri’, which is thriving in similar soil at Stocktonbury, a local garden which we love.

In the absence of naturalised tulips, we liberally place tulips in pots around the garden. Photographs of some of them are above. We love experimenting with new shape and colour combinations, although sometimes, it’s hard to beat the dazzle of a single tulip, en masse, in a large pot.

Suddenly we’re almost at the end of April and the first May bank holiday is coming fast into view. This is the time of year when we start to divide the number of jobs that still need doing, with the number of weekends until our garden opening (nine incidentally) and then try to suppress the mounting panic. We take the responsibility of opening the garden for visitors very seriously. After all, people are paying money, albeit in support of an excellent charity, to visit our garden and we don’t want to disappoint them. That means that, on top of the ‘usual’ gardening jobs, weeding, pruning, sowing and pricking out seeds etc., there’s also an awful lot of sweeping, tidying and repairing. We also are pleased to welcome groups for private visits to the garden and the first of these this year is booked for the first week of June, further shortening the time available for all that prep.

We know though, that in the midst of making lists of jobs and crossing them off, it’s important not to lose sight of why we do this: because we love gardening and we love our garden. Every now and again therefore, glass in hand, we just wander, invariably followed by both cats and both dogs and enjoy the garden that we’re creating.

Suddenly we’re almost at the end of April and the first May bank holiday is coming fast into view. This is the time of year when we start to divide the number of jobs that still need doing, with the number of weekends until our garden opening (nine incidentally) and then try to suppress the mounting panic. We take the responsibility of opening the garden for visitors very seriously. After all, people are paying money, albeit in support of an excellent charity, to visit our garden and we don’t want to disappoint them. That means that, on top of the ‘usual’ gardening jobs, weeding, pruning, sowing and pricking out seeds etc., there’s also an awful lot of sweeping, tidying and repairing. We also are pleased to welcome groups for private visits to the garden and the first of these this year is booked for the first week of June, further shortening the time available for all that prep.

We know though, that in the midst of making lists of jobs and crossing them off, it’s important not to lose sight of why we do this: because we love gardening and we love our garden. Every now and again therefore, glass in hand, we just wander, invariably followed by both cats and both dogs and enjoy the garden that we’re creating.

We’re opening our garden in aid of the National Garden Scheme again this year. All being well, we’ll be open for visitors on the weekend of 3rd and 4th July.

This will be our 4th year of welcoming visitors to Wharf House and it is something we greatly enjoy doing. As many readers of this blog will know, the NGS raises money for a variety of nursing, end-of-life and gardening charities. The premise of the scheme is very simple: private gardens open for the public, at a modest charge and the money raised goes to support fantastic charities. The range of gardens which open for the NGS is vast, from city courtyards to rambling country acres. The vast majority of gardens are the creation of keen amateurs, like us. Perhaps this is the reason why we have always found NGS visits the best way of provoking new ideas for our own garden?

For obvious reasons, last year was a tough one for the NGS. Many gardens were not able to open at all. Others had to open with a much reduced capacity. We had roughly the same number of visitors as in 2019 but because we weren’t able to sell refreshments, our taking were down by about 50%. This means that terrific charities like Marie Curie, Hospice U.K. and Macmillan Cancer Support, received less money than had been planned.

This year, we hope to have our best year yet. We know that many people are desperate to get out and about again and with the fantastic success of the vaccine roll-out programme, we hope that, by July, a stroll around a garden, followed by a cup of tea and a slice of homemade cake, will be just the thing!

It’s fair to say that neither of us came to gardening with the construction skills that are so often necessary. Over the years, particularly since we started to make the garden at Wharf House, we’ve nevertheless had to turn our hand to all sorts of building jobs. Every Spring we have to repair the weir on the stream, which raises the water level around our little island. We’ve made a lot of raised beds, mainly in the veg garden but also in the working area (photographed above). We rely on help from family and friends with more demanding projects: pergolas, gates and the covered dining area which we love. Like anything though, with experience and practice, one does get better. You may not agree when you look at the two latest raised beds pictured above but we’re pretty pleased with them! Not least since they’re on a hefty double slope, dropping well over a metre from one end to the other.

This is the time of year when we try to get jobs like this done. The days are longer, the weather is a bit milder and the garden is only slowly waking-up from its Winter sleep. This weekend we aim to fill the new raised beds with top soil. We’re taking the soil out of the raised beds in our polytunnel, which are too deep and are showing their age. Before Easter we also hope to build a set of steps up a particularly steep bank; to put in a substantial post for a vigorous rose to grow-up and last but not least, to fix that damn weir once again.

We had a blast of Winter last weekend. A sprinkling of snow last Saturday was followed by a proper dump on Saturday night/Sunday morning. There then followed three very cold days before we returned to ‘normal’ with a torrential downpour.

It used to be perfectly usual of course for Winter in the U.K. to include long spells of very cold weather, including weeks at a time with lying snow. These long cold spells do seem to have become less frequent. Last Winter for example, not only did we have no snow at all, we had very few days when we even needed to defrost the car first thing in the morning.

As gardeners, the absence of longish cold spells is problematic. A decent cold snap helps to keep pests and diseases under control. If we are to have more frequent wet, mild Winters, without decent cold spells, we are going to have to get used to new and more frequent problematic infestations. So, we were more than happy to endure the sub-zero temperatures for a few days. And of course, if you have no where you need to go, the snow does relieve the gloom of Britain in January!

Our biggest and most pressing job at this time of year is pruning roses. Pruning climbing and rambling roses presents a particular challenge, not least because the job is so time consuming.

The principles of pruning established climbers and ramblers are simple enough. We cut out dead or diseased stems. We cut out old stems to give the newest growth more vigour and space. Last of all we shorten side shoots by about two thirds. That’s the most important part of the whole process really, since it’s from these side shoots that the coming season’s flowers will come.

We have made our life significantly more difficult by growing clematis through many of our climbers and ramblers. You can see the obvious difficulties this poses in the photograph. It makes the pruners job even more painstaking as they have to battle the wilder growth of two vigorous plants.

Having said all of that, there is something undeniably satisfying about having brought order to the chaos of an unpruned climbing rose, particularly one which is tangled with an unpruned clematis. I know it’s not fashionable these days to admire ‘order’ in a garden but for a few short months, I do let out a little sigh of satisfaction when catching sight of a neat and tidy climbing rose.