Netting

Our visit to Tatton Park was bracketed by days at home, which we mostly spent outside, of course. Saturday was dominated by going over the hillside with the brushcutter, cutting the grass, and removing or weakening as much of the brambles, gorse, rush-grass, and ragwort as possible. It's hot and hard work, but the hillside is definitely showing improvement. This time last year, it would have been tricky to get to the two 'best' apple trees, and barely possible to get to the other three or so—and impossible to reach the track up into the middle levels or hill-top.

Now, the orchard is easy to walk around, and the main clearing of the middle level is accessible. The bracken there, which I've now cut down three times, is still coming up, but not strongly. By comparison, the bracken on the other side of the wall, and further along the hill, where I've not done anything, is six feet tall, and impenetrable.

I have to confess that we saw a rather fine summer house at Tatton Park, one of the Malvern Collection. It's a few years off, yet, though, but it was very nice, and would be a lovely, secluded hideaway on the hillside.

Enough of that. Otherwise, on Saturday, I checked that the newly installed sprinkler on the woodstore's green roof is working, and established that my beer is ready for barrelling. The chardonnay I started at the same time, incidentally, is in the cellar clearing, and is probably ready for bottling. The dandelion is slowly clearing, having finished its vigorous fermentation; the elderflower is on a warm windowsill, bubbling furiously.

Monday was more varied, although we had to contend with showers. The butterfly netting is now up, covering the two plantings of brassicas (which replaced the alliums in the Q-bed, and the early potatoes up one arm of the C-bed). The sprouts, kale, cauliflowers, purple sprouting, and swedes have all settled in fine, and the rows of 'Golden Ball' turnips we sowed at the same time have germinated well.

We discovered a pot of leeks, which hadn't been planted out, so we filled a few gaps in the rows of leeks where tiny seedlings hadn't transplanted (only about three of thirty, and those three were properly tiny), and put the rest in spaces among the autumn onions. The earliest of these, Early Fen, looks like it's nearly ready. On a similar note, the garlics (Germidour) and summer onions (Radar), which are drying in the wood shelter, are coming along nicely.

We've found that we've been losing a lot of courgettes before they get to a sensible size, rotting from one end. On investigation, I think it's where the flower has started to rot, and this has spread into the fruit. To combat this, I'm going to try to remove the flower as soon as it's gone over, and let the fruit swell. Jenny & Philip are away, so we're also picking their fruit and veg (and sweet peas!), which means we're inundated with courgettes.

The hanging baskets, which we tried with dangling nasturtiums for the first time, are looking splendid: I must get a photo of the front of the house. I'm trying to remember to regularly feed them: strangely, the two on the front of the house proper (rather than on the porch extension) are doing less well, though they get more light (marginally).

Once that, and some weeding, was all done, we spent a little while clearing some spaces for our flower show purchases, before going in for lunch. This afternoon I've spent preparing David and Anne's wedding present: but more on that after their wedding...

RHS Tatton Park

I've been looking forward to this for some time: this week's seen the 2013 RHS flower show at Tatton Park, and—like last year—we bought tickets for the final day.

Near our entrance, and the first thing we stopped at, was 'The Home Guard-ener', a World War II allotment garden, which uses the Ministry of Food guidelines for crops and spacings, and varieties available at the time. At the end, beyond the Anderson shelter (planted with marrows growing over it), was a really colourful flower bed, which we thought made the whole garden rather ornamental, despite 90% of it being vegetables only in different shades of green. Pleasingly, one of the potatoes was 'Home Guard', introduced in 1945.

'The Home Guard-ener' (photo © Ian 2013)

There were a number of 'Galaxy' themed gardens, which were interesting, and had some pleasing planting, but—perhaps inevitably—didn't really contain anything we'd probably replicate. However, I did rather like the chocolate-scented cosmos (C. atrosanguineus), which cropped up in several gardens.

Chocolate Cosmos in 'NSO: Watch This Space' (photo © Ian 2013)

'The Edible Medley' had a pleasing stone rill running through it, which has us wondering whether a rill draining from the colour wheel to the water garden is something we should consider.

'The Edible Medley' (photo © Ian 2013)

I had to take a photo of two woven willow cats, playing with a willow mouse.

'The Animals Went In Two By Two' (photo © Ian 2013)

'The Water Garden' (photo © Ian 2013)

Of the municipal beds, our favourite was the one from Birmingham City Council.

'The Canals of Birmingham' (photo © Ian 2013)

The grass border at the front of Echomap's garden caught our eye.

'Sound Idea' (photo © Ian 2013)

I fear Liz may now want a water wheel as a water feature.

'The Industrious Force of Nature' (photo © Ian 2013)

Whereas I'd rather like a garden observatory.

'The Star-Gazer's Retreat' (photo © Ian 2013)

For that future day when we might keep chickens, I rather like Kate Humble's Flyte So Fancy chicken coop.

Planted-up chicken coop (photo © Ian 2013)

RHS National Young Designer of the Year went to Tony Woods, who designed 'Escape to the City'. Last year's winner (Tristen Knight, with 'Brownfield Beauty') was also one we liked: we obviously share our opinions with the judges. We bought a couple of plants from this during the sell-off, including the brunnera just visible in the bottom left of this photo.

'Escape to the City' (photo © Ian 2013)

The garden leaflet for this one was the best I've seen: it had mug-shots of most (all?) of the plants, which made it really easy to identify something that caught your eye.

'Escape to the City' (photo © Ian 2013)

Cercis canadensis in 'The Bee Garden' (photo © Ian 2013) 

Predictably, we bought a load of plants, and had a struggle back to the car with half a dozen pots in each hand.

Car-load of purchases (© Ian 2013)

To enumerate them: a dark leafed ligularia; a 'Chocolate' eupatorium (E. rugosum); a variegated lysimachia (L. punctata 'Alexander', I think); Sanguisorba 'Tanna'; three 'Ravenwing' cow parsleys; a 'Queen Victoria' lobelia; a replacement 'Miss Willmott's Ghost' eryngium (and tray of seedlings!); three heucheras; a Japanese ginger; an edible tulbaghia 'Silver Lace'; a variegated agapanthus ('Tinkerbell', perhaps?); three 'Bishop of Llandaff' dahlias; a tradescantia; and the Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost' mentioned above. We also bought some heritage seeds, from Pennard Plants, including cucomelon, and a purple climbing French bean, 'Blue Coco'.

I think there are two more plants, too, which I can't remember.

The purchases (© Ian 2013)

Notes for the wishlist:

• Achillea 'Apple Blossom' has an unusual (for achillea) almost purplish colour.
• Scented geranium 'Lady Plymouth' is rather attractive.
• Tomato 'Totem' is remarkably compact: from Pennard Plants, I think.
• 'Red Malabar' spinach is a pretty climbing form.
• Potentilla thurberi 'Monarch's Velvet' (a herbaceous potentilla?) has a good colour flower.
• Hordeum jubatum (foxtail barley) has attractive flowerheads.
• Coreopsis 'Jive' is nice.

Brassicas

Having taken up the over-wintered onions and garlic, and also the adjacent spinach, we had space to plant out the brassicas, which have been growing on in increasingly large pots, waiting for their allotted space to free up. So, in went nine scarlet kale, nine purple sprouting broccoli, nine Brussels sprouts, nine January King cauliflowers, and fifteen swedes. We still need to plant out the other cauliflowers, sow the turnips, and add the Frostie cabbages, which are going where the potatoes are gradually coming out.

Sweet Peas

The sweet peas are at that glorious stage where, the morning after you pick the whole obelisk-worth of flowers...there's more open.

Sweet peas ( Ian 2013)

In addition to this, we've had an uneventful weekend, tidying up firewood, lifting the Radar over-wintered onions, the Germidour garlic, and the Elephant garlic (all looking good, and racked in the woodstore to dry over the next few days), and doing odds and ends.

We also lifted the Lad Christl potatoes, having taken up the Swift a little while ago. The yield's noticeably higher (16.8kg of Lady Christl, against 6.3kg of Swift), but not as high as I expected (which would have been about 20kg). They're also not looking fabulous: quite a lot of marking.

Elderflower Wine

We would have done this last week (which is closer to previous years batches), but my trip and then going to Cambridge made it hard to fit in, so we've had to delay until today before brewing a batch of elderflower wine. While I mowed the lawn and watered, Liz cut all the flowers off a big bowl of elderflower blossom, and after dinner, I set it off. That entails pouring a gallon of boiling water over the flowers, and adding 250g of chopped raisins, 1.5kg of sugar, the juice of three lemons, and a splash of strong tea (for tannin). In the morning, I'll add yeast and yeast nutrient: next Monday, I'll strain it into a demi-john.

Cambridge in Summer

We had yesterday to ourselves in Cambridge, and spent the day pottering around the city: the market, Clare College gardens (looking lovely as ever), and lunch on St John's backs.

Today, Liz was speaking at her conference, so I had another day on my own in Cambridge. I spent a little while in the Fitzwilliam Museum this morning, mostly in their Greek, Roman, and Egyptian galleries. Unfortunately, they don't allow photography inside. No matter:

Portico Ceiling, Fitzwilliam Museum (© Ian 2013)

I then met Alan for lunch in the University's Botanic Gardens (Ann doesn't work in Cambridge any more, so she couldn't join us). We sat near some well-worked lavender at one end of the site, and went round the rest of the grounds.

Lavender and Bee (© Ian 2013)

Waterlilies (© Ian 2013)

Water Garden (© Ian 2013)

Member of the aster family? (© Ian 2013)

Echinops (© Ian 2013)

I met Liz mid-afternoon, in Murray Edwards (New Hall), and we drove home, stopping briefly at a garden centre. Old habits.

Murray Edwards (nee New Hall) gardens (© Ian 2013)

Thyme Bed

One of the reasons for visiting Rachel and Philip is that they've been planning to lift some of their patio and make a small lawn, of either chamomile or thyme, but have been struggling to make time. The patio's mostly rectangular slabs, but there's a circle set into it, about 2.5m in diameter, with three rings of slabs.

Using a crowbar, we managed to lift the centre slab, and the next ring of slabs, this morning before going to their church. It was considerably quicker than their previous method of wedging a screwdriver under, because of the strength and length of the crowbar. We next used a sledgehammer to break apart the mortar fixing the slabs down, before using the pick-axe to get out the mortar, and the hardcore from below. Rachel riddled the hardcore, so we could put the stones back in to help with drainage, and we dug the bed down to the depth of the clay subsoil. Refilling with stones and topsoil, we had a 6-foot circular bed by mid-afternoon: it's another example of the right tools making the job easy, as the lack of crowbar, sledgehammer, and pickaxe were what was making it insurmountable.

We planted it up with twelve thyme plants: three each of four varieties (pink, purple, white, and lemon, I think they were), and hopefully when we go back in a few weeks (for David's wedding), it'll be starting to knit together.

Barnsdale Gardens

We've travelled down to Cambridge today, to stay with Rachel and Philip until Tuesday (Liz is speaking at a conference, and so we've come down early for a visit). On the way, we stopped at Barnsdale Gardens, which were the work of Geoff Hamilton.

There are a number of relatively small plots, many of which are discrete gardens. One is the Artisan's Cottage Garden, which had a few interesting ideas, mostly home-made furniture.

Arbour, storage, and plant support from the Artisan's Cottage Garden (© Ian 2013)

The Reclaimed Garden had an interesting fence/archwork which we thought might be suited to the sides of the driveway/ramp.

The Reclaimed Garden (© Ian 2013)

The Parterre Garden, like several others, combined fruit, vegetables, and ornamentals rather well. We thought the Parterre was probably most successful.

Parterre Garden (© Ian 2013)

This Achillea (I think) was at the edge of the Mediterranean Garden.

Achillea (© Ian 2013)

This Bishop's Weed (Aegopodium podagraria 'Variegatum') was in the Woodland Walk: we rather liked it, so we picked one up in the nursery. (I liked this: height 10cm, spread indeterminate.)

Variegated Bishop's Weed (© Ian 2013)

This was in the Artisan's Cottage Garden, and I don't recognise it. Any ideas?

Plant from the Artisan's Cottage Garden (© Ian 2013)

Hot

It's been a very hot week, and it's looking like it'll continue until at least next weekend, so we've had to take the step of watering the fruit trees on the hillside. Established trees probably wouldn't need it after a single hot week, but, of course, these are in their first year after planting, and their root systems won't be very extensive or established. Fortunately, I had a spare 50m hose in the garage, which, combined with the normal reel, was enough to get to all the trees (though not the sweet chestnut and willow bed in the clearing, although they're more sheltered and cool), and it didn't take too long, in the end.

Otherwise, we've done some tidying and sorting: split and stacked some wood, Liz has tidied the driveway up, I've painted some window frames, and we potted up some vegetables and weeded.

The first of the sweet peas have flowered, and are now nicely scenting the house.

Tidied Verge

We managed to get a couple of little jobs done this evening, in glorious weather. Liz weeded the gaps in the weed-suppressant membranes around the fruit trees (the slit where we fitted the membrane around the trunk, inevitably, gets some weeds growing), while I folded down the top of the chicken-wire cages that protect the plum trees. These are already at about the right height to start training in permanent laterals, but a couple of these have been damaged by rubbing against the cage: hence folding it down out of the way. That still leaves about 150cm of cage height to protect against deer.

Then Sigrid and I cut back the grass (and docks, nettles, and weeds) along the verge outside the house and hillside, which has needed doing for a while. I've delayed because the daffodil foliage is only just about gone—there's still some, which I tried to avoid. It's startling that there's still some showing in early July, but it's an obvious consequence of the delayed flowering. The verge now looks a lot better, which is good, because it was starting to irritate me, and some of it was making visibility poor when pulling out of the driveway.

It looks as though one of the blackcurrants has lost a lot of its fruit, which is a great shame. I fear it may be a lack of watering (it's never felt dry enough to need to irrigate the fruit, but I might have been mistaken): alternatives are a potash shortage, a pest (no idea what), or a cold spell shortly after fruit set (I don't remember one). So, I gave the fruit beds a good water, and I'll spread some food, as they're the two possible causes that I can affect.