Mary's birthday present to the walled gardens

Mary Noble, who has rooted for us since we started work on our lost gardens, brought us in this fantastic surprise at the beginning of the month. When we first started, Mary used to help us by baking cakes to sell in the tearoom which was then, just a shed. She still helps us by volunteering and bringing friends round the gardens. I hope she will forgive me putting her on our blog. Thank you Mary for all your support and for this fantastic memento of the last ten years!

November projects

I am often asked what we do in the winter. Here is a 'behind-the-scenes' look at Winter Work. Looking at these pictures it is hard to imagine how beautiful everything will look in the Spring! Somehow, every year, it does.

The White Space Garden: This is having the stonework (ordered last year) put into position. Challenges here include fixing the edging stones, delivered as a perfect sphere, into an ancient pond shape that is slightly oval. Very heavy machinery and lots of muscle will be needed to lift the urn into place. Bulb plantings will be over planted with perennials in the Spring.

The Cottage Garden: As you may be aware this year has been incredibly dry and there is just not enough soil here to keep our plants healthy so Steve is raising the beds in the centre to provide a greater depth of moisture retentive soil. The paths are the original cement paths from the 1950’s so they have been dug up and replaced. The greenhouse nearest the path has been completely renovated inside this summer and we are now working on the exterior paintwork.
The Ha-Ha at the end of the South Lawn (near the giraffes): Sir Fred/Robin have completely rebuilt this. The full effect of this will be seen during snowdrop time when we open the snowdrop walk.

The River: After nearly a decade of discussion with the environment agency we have finally done some work here. It was very messy as you can see! The ideal habitat in small rivers like this is to create pools and narrow rills of faster flowing water. We have tried to encourage the river into this shape. Now we need a big flood to bring some sediment down into the blocked off areas so that we can see if we have got it right.  It will probably take a couple of attempts, moving timber around, until we are happy. Then we can start to consider planting. Amazingly, even in this short time, the number of trout sightings in this little patch has doubled and the kingfisher is fishing here regularly.

The Kitchen Garden: The orchard is going in. A year ago Tim and I asked Shaun D’Arcy Burt of Mr D’Arcys Heritage Fruit Trees to supply us with tree varieties that were local to Lincolnshire and this area. There is a strong apple tradition around Stamford. He grafted the rarer varieties last spring and delivered them at the beginning of November. Lincolnshire Gardens Trust has supported us with a small grant for the apple trees.
The Poppy borders:  When we first put in the poppy borders we put boards along the front to hold the soil back. The weight has got too much for them and they had rotted so are being replaced this year. 

The Pickery: Jamie, assisted by Jack (who is here on work experience) has been double digging and enlarging the sweet pea beds.

Still to do this winter: As well as finishing these projects we will be repainting the little shed outside the history room, repainting the tearoom, mulching the beds with mushroom compost and further plantings. 

Daft English Sport at Easton Walled Gardens

October half term starts on Sunday which can only mean one thing.... the return of amateur sport to Easton Walled Gardens. Now, for those of you that imagine this is just for the kids, try again. Dads get very competitive over this but it's not about strength... you need skill, you need judgement and you need....er.. a pumpkin.

The terraces at Easton fall away to the river, and during the summer are a tasteful and creative melange of wildflowers, chirping crickets and droning bees...


The Venue

 but by the end of the summer all this has been mown away and general pumpkin mania is unleashed.

The rules are simple: no overarm, the pumpkin must touch the first terrace, furthest one wins. Collapsed pumpkin = instant disqualification.

There is only one caveat..if the river floods, you might have to bring a wetsuit to get your pumpkin back.

Pumpkins are supplied from local Lincolnshire growers making this an all round eco-friendly, local and slightly mad sport, come and give it a go. More information on half term activities for kids can be found by clicking here.

The Giants of the Gardens

 

In our Cedar meadow, where the giraffes are now, we have four fine specimen conifers. Despite their size I think they were only planted in the nineteenth century.

Sequoiadendron giganteum, better known as The Giant Sequoia or Wellingtonia arrived in Britain no earlier than 1847 and the Cedars possibly replaced some much larger specimens. In the 1880's the winters here were so severe that the ancient trees were killed outright. I think the plants we see today are the successors.



only visible with a magnifying glass the
tips on these needles are translucent.



It has taken me sometime to identify the Cedars correctly as they are closely related to the better known Cedar of Lebanon. Thanks to Hugh Johnson's book 'Trees' I finally got out there with a magnifying glass to spot the only sure difference: A tiny translucent tip on the end of the needles which requires very close inspection. Ours have this and therefore are definitely Atlas Cedars (C.atlantica).

We have two fine specimens of Sequoiadendron giganteum, Wellingtonia or Giant Sequoia but, up until now, no specimens of the even taller Sequoia sempervirens or Dawn Redwood. So I started at the bottom and grew this baby (below) from seed. We have two and they are now around 7' tall. Draped in ghostly fleece all last winter they should now be strong enough to go it alone. You can see them near the carpark.

Sequoia sempervirens

I'm not alone in wanting to grow these magnificent trees from seed and this site http://www.redwoodworld.co.uk/talltales.htm provides some lovely anecdotal stories from around the world.



The Giraffes arrive...oh, and a couple of gratuitous zinnia pics.

In May I bumped into these two at the Chelsea flower show. For some time I had been looking for a sculpture that would fill the space at the end of the long terrace without costing a five figure sum. Being on the plebeian side of art appreciation, cones and helixes didn't speak to me but these guys did. They arrived today and look perfectly at home looking dreamily over the park. I fear that, like the teas, they may become a bigger draw to the gardens than our carefully crafted planting schemes. Since I am mad about them already that suits me fine .

At 13' tall this fellow could do with a name, any suggestions?



Zinnia prob. 'Aztec Sunset'
(it's a long time since the spring sowing)



Zinnia profusion 'Coral Pink '



Autumn Country Market

This years' Autumn Country Market on September 11th  (11.00 -4.00 pm) looks to be our best yet. With 30 stallholders throughout two courtyards, the newly renovated coach house and for the first time, the old stable block, it promises to be a great day out.

The decks have been cleared for action and we look forward to welcoming local craftsmen and women and local food producers. Other stallholders include a retro or vintage section including pretty decorative items and cup cakes.

Coach House cleared for action!

The beautiful International harpist Eleanor Turner and her students will be playing for charity and there is face painting for little ones.



Eleanor Turner



Laetitia Maklouf, garden author and broadcaster will be joining us for our Question and Answer Gardening Session and  signing her book 'The Virgin Gardener' so if you are new to gardening she is the one to talk to.
Lucy will be talking vegetables and cut flowers and Ursula Cholmeley will be answering your other queries.

Of course, the tearoom will be open offering light lunches and teas.

We are keeping our fingers crossed for good weather but with 12 acres of gardens to explore including the Yew tunnel to shelter under and almost all the stall holders under cover in the event of the odd drop of rain, we hope you will come and see us this Sunday.

Our friends from Africa

The arrival of the flycatchers in May is always a big deal for me. They have come as far as the swallows and they have massive understated charm. They sit on twigs waiting for insects to pass, dart out, grab their prey and return to the branch. They have bright deep brown eyes and are a pale brown with attractive, delicate markings. They are touchingly unafraid of humans. They nest near buildings in the most ridiculously open spots. Here is a photo of a brood of four chicks that successfully fledged about a week ago in a nest we passed everyday. Now that we have done our job of keeping predators from their young, the whole family has gone off to another part of the wood.

The swallows continue to display in the gardens amazing us with their ability to fly in and out of the pop holes we created for them in our sheds. They bring so much activity to the gardens and any minute will be joined by crowds of house martins and swallows from the north. As they move south they use the gardens as a staging post to stock up on insects before they press on again.

Sweet Peas: what to do now

Its sweet pea time of year again and the scent is filling my house, the office, the gardens, the tearoom... Its a hard life. For those of you that are searching for some answers to your sweet pea questions, hopefully this may help: 

If you have Sweet Peas looking a bit weedy remember that they love a deep root run and are quite greedy feeders. 'Well, thanks for that' you say 'but its a bit late now, they are in my poor soil and will have to get on with it.' In which case, you can use a foliar feed when watering and you will find they reward you by picking up speed.


L. odoratus 'Mars'

 Support your plants on drums of sheep netting or against poles. Remember though that the tendrils need something thin to wrap themselves around and will need tying in initially. They cannot grip onto bamboo canes so add some pea netting over your structure.
Keep picking the flowers as they appear, not too difficult a task. Once a sweet pea has set seed, a message goes to the whole plant to say its job is done and it will stop flowering.
If you havent sown any sweet peas this year and find some small plants in pots at a garden centre, it is not too late. You will have to wait until September for the flowers but it will be worth it.

Lathyrus grandiflora mixture

Cutting and arranging: Make sure you use a pair of scissors rather than a knife which tends to pull on the plant and damage it. You cant get a duff posy of sweet peas and I think they look best on their own. For the short stemmed types use a little narrow necked container like a vintage medicine bottle. For big long stems you can use a flared vase.

If your sweet peas are looking a bit ropey this year, feed them, keep deadheading and give them time, it has been a particularly difficult start to the season, with dry weather and late frosts.If you have any questions post them here and we will do our best to answer them.

If Sweet pea growing has evaded you for this year, come and see ours. During Sweet Pea week you can pick them too.

Sweet Pea Week at Easton Walled Gardens runs daily from 3rd-10th July.

The Velvet border

Built on the rubble of the old front drive in the driest part of the garden, the Velvet Border did not have a prepossessing start. It is sited just below the gatehouse and is about 15m long. Originally I planned a red border but soon got fed up with the restriction and decided to focus on texture instead. The colourways resulting from this have been far better than I could have hoped. Deep reds and blues vie with dusky yellows and the palest furriest leaves.

This border has finally come into its own this year. The delphiniums and the oriental poppy 'Pattys Plum' have got their roots down and decided to show what they can really do. Supported by the great Onopordums at a mere 9' tall and the purple hue of Cotinus we feel this is a border worthy of a Chelsea showing. Its not much of a shot, my gardening skills are better than my photography (I hope) but you can at least get a feel for the lushness of the planting.

As the gaps appear in midsummer we have Tithonias and Coleus 'Black Dragon' on standby to continue the theme. Hope you have time to come and see it x

Salad in seconds.

If you have done nothing about salad growing this year, feel you have left it too late or just would like a bit of lettuce for your sandwiches, this works brilliantly...
You will need:
A packet of mixed salad leaves seeds
An old fish box or similar plastic box (with holes punched in the base if necessary to let water out) or a window box.
Peat free general potting compost

Fill box with compost, water compost, sprinkle lettuce seeds thinly in rows, pat down with your hand to ensure seeds are just covered, keep watered and wait. In a month it should look like this:



Box of salad grown by Nick who manages
our immaculate vegetable garden.



Put it outside your door where you can pick a few leaves for your sandwiches. It's that easy!

A Soggy End to the Weekend

The three amigos. The survivors photograph: 4.00 pm on Monday

Postcards from Vals exhibition

Laugh or cry? I am not sure. The blessed rain that we desperately needed arrived and fell steadily all day...on Bank Holiday Monday. However, the few hardy visitors that came had nothing but praise for how the gardens are looking especially the pleasing neatness of the vegetable garden. The rain has freshened everything up and kept us weeding flat out. The sweet peas have come out really early and some of the climbing roses look beautiful. The swallows are feeding their young with a new glut of insects. The forecast is good for this week and I can have a week off from worrying about dry ground.

flowers in the gardens now

Here is a beautiful bouquet of flowers arranged by Lucy in the tearoom. All the flowers you would expect in May.

...and here's what we are also harvesting...Sweet Peas in bunches!

The plant fair is this weekend and includes Val Littlewood's glorious bee images so if you like flowers, bumblebees and shopping we hope to see you here

Gilia tricolor

We have been swamped with demand for our small pots of Gilia.

If you have bought this wonderful plant from us and would like to know more, here is a link to a blog I wrote for Fennel and Fern which may help. http://www.fennelandfern.co.uk/blog/2011/04/22/gilia-tricolor/

It is flowering in the garden now before setting seed. We may get a new crop before the end of the year. Seed is widely available if you are unable to visit us.

Beautiful blowsy Irises

Our Irises are breaking into flower this week. The flowers can be viewed at eye level or from above.

The Iris bed is raised to take full advantage of the sun and edged with catmint. It began with imported soil. Unfortunately a farmer's definition of topsoil is not the same as a gardener's. For two years we have been uncompacting, feeding and developing the one-up-from bedrock soil. Look at how strong they are now. In a word: Lush.

Like hollywood starlets from the 1950's they have suitably glamorous names. Below clockwise from top left are 'Pirates Quest','Vandal Spirit', 'Spreckles' and 'Mer du Sud'.

No rain this week either

No rain, beautiful blue skies....what are we complaining about? Like farmers, gardeners are never really happy unless we have something to moan about. This month, we will be mostly complaining about beautiful blue skies with no rain in it. Week one was bliss, week two was also great and led us into Easter thinking joyfully of visitor numbers, week three... losing our nerve a bit, now into week four and no rain forecast and the grass is beginning to turn brown...

The Royal Wedding is British, the street parties are British but... no rain... its not even local, let alone British.

'Fairies and Acorns' Treasure Hunt

The gardens are bursting with Spring colour and birdsong and the fairies are coming out of hibernation.

When I used to visit gardens with small children I was always looking for ways to entertain them while I looked around the whole garden, not just the usual playground next to the carpark. We hope this trail will keep your children delighted, engaged and moving in the right direction.

 Hidden throughout the gardens this Easter are fairies and the acorns they collected last autumn. Can you spot where they have been hidden? Spot 15 or more and win an Easter prize and a certificate. More information is available on our Easter Event page

We have a turf maze, yew tunnel, swing, balls to kick around, lambs to spot in the park, a birdhide and den. We love to see children enjoying the garden and picking a few flowers so don't feel you need to stop them on our account. A fat hand clutching a flower without a stem is a delicious sight.

The Treasure Hunt with Easter prizes opens Easter Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday but the fairies and acorns will stay up throughout the open season.

Tomatoes and Annuals for sale

We now have a stock of unusual annuals and tomato plants for sale. You can visit the sales area without coming into the gardens, although if you visit us the gardens are looking full of spring loveliness at the moment....

See the Tomatoes blog for descriptions of the varieties we have for sale

We also have a good selection of well priced perennials and a few varieties of David Austin Roses in stock.We are expecting our popular plant supports in any day, will let you know when they appear.

Looks: Gorgeous. Smell: Unspeakable.



Fritillaria imperialis for Wordless Wednesday





Tomatoes

We grow a fair number of tomatoes at Easton and have been growing sweet cherry and big fat cheeked beefsteak varieties for some time. We use them in the tearoom fresh and roast the glut for using in soups overwinter. Here are a few of our favourites:

Tomato 'Cuor di Bue':

We grew this last year under Paolo’s instruction (he runs Seeds of Italy) We weren’t excited by the first fruits but as they ripened they were spectacular! Big beefsteak type tomatoes, virtually seedless, make the perfect salad tomato or for passata. Needless to say we are growing it again this year.

Tomato ‘Black Cherry’:

A regular with us. Really long trusses of smallish dark pink/black tomatoes, easy to eat whole or halve for salads or cooking. We grow it undercover with Cuor di Bue.

Tomato ‘Principe Borghese’: This fantastic tomato is a vine tomato suitable for outdoor growing. It’s egg shaped fruits are good with salads and then, at the end of the season can be dried. Lucy, our florist used them like this last year.Lucy cut the toms in half, laid them out flat on baking tray sprinkled with salt and pepper and olive oil. She put in the bottom oven of an Aga or plate warmer overnight until semi-dried then put into air tight jars with olive oil.Summer in a jar!

Tomato baby plum ‘Red Cherry’: This is new to us this year. The description from Seeds of Italy describes it thus ‘produces sweet long oblong fruits, is ideal for containers and can be grown outdoors.’

Tomato ‘Cumulus F1’: An early ripening variety with typical tomato shape fruits that has good resistance to disease. Can be grown in or outside.

Tomato ‘Gardeners Delight’: Well named, this is a cherry tomato with trusses of sweet tasting tomatoes on a compact bush that can be grown inside or out.

Tomato ‘Tamina’: for us this grows better outside than in and produces a heavy crop of medium sized fruits with very little side shoot removal required. Easy if your whole world doesnt revolve around growing perfect tomatoes.

We have some of these for sale in the shop as young plants or seeds at the time of writing. The fruiting plants can be seen in the greenhouse or cottage garden with chillies and spaghetti squash from May onwards.

A beautiful tulip for March

Tulipa neustruevae and chionodoxa at Easton

Not a good beginning for a bulb, to have an unwritable and unpronounceable name. This is a survivor though and worth a mention for any garden. I was given this bulb along with a host of others, by Johnny Walkers Bulbs  (superbly successful gold medal winners) to trial in the gardens. Last year I noticed it had made a good clump and rashly divided it in the green, that is, just after it had flowered.
In spite of this, every bulb has flowered and I have introduced it into short grassland where it looks as happy in the sunshine as the shaded border it came from. For us, a tulip that not only survives but actually bulks up is a wonder. It has a great deal of charm particularly amongst other early tulips which seem too large for their short stems. This is gracefully tall (15cms) and with a flower reminiscent of the fading crocuses around it.

Identifying this bulb is not easy. It came to us as Tulipa neustruevae 'February Gold' but I cannot find a mention of named varieties. On the internet, some agree with the look of my bulbs, yellow on tall brown stems with brown colouration on outside of the petals, but others opt for pure yellow, floppy stems etc. It is undoubtedly closely related to Tulipa dasystemon syn. T.tarda but comes from lower down the slopes of its native Tien Shan (more of which to follow.) An Australian nursery catalogue suggests that it likes dry acid sandy soil in warmer areas. We have cold alkaline soil but it is dry and free draining.

Now, this description of plant places of origin. It's all very well saying it comes from the Western Tien Shan in Central Asia but so do circuses, wars and sometimes, Michael Palin, so it's not very helpful. I  look up Tien Shan and its habitats.My initial research takes me to Wikipedia where I can just about work out from all the geographical data that the Tien or Tian Shan is a huge mountain range covering 6 or 7 countries. Not much information there for the gardener except this little nugget - the lower slopes of the Tien Shan contain forests of wild walnuts and apples. How evocative. Immediately I get a better picture of where my little tulip might grow. Lower mountain slopes, probably shortish on soil and by the forebears of trees that grow in my garden. A little more delving around a travel site reveals that it is full of 'warm-hearted locals,' alpine lakes and canyons.

There is plenty more research to do but by now I am really taken with this little fellow who may grow along alpine passes crossed by smiling nomads. I plan to spread him through the gardens under the walnuts and the new apple orchard we plant this autumn.

Sources for this bulb include Broadleigh bulbs and Pottertons Nurseries.

Tasty Tuesday

Our first harvest of the year. Rhubarb and berry tarts will soon be heading for the pub.

The Coach House

Our newly renovated Coach House. When we first moved here the roof of this building had collapsed and an ash tree was growing out of the floor above this picture. Now it is available for family celebrations and meetings.

Before (1995)

After (February 2011)

Our first event held here two weeks ago was the Lincolnshire Gardens Trust annual lecture which seems more than appropriate. They have supported us since the beginning of this restoration and Steffie Shields gave a great talk followed by tea in the gardens.

For more information and images on the opportunities available to hire this space please see our webpages. The Coach House