Spring is well and truly in the air though I feel it is not coming down to land as quickly as I would like and we are busy busy. The garden is open for the 2010 season from the 26^th March daily 11am - 5pm (closed weds & thurs), though I do have a group visit booked in before then.

Josh, our resident Artist Blacksmith has just finished a commissioned gate which is superb.

I am hoping it will soon be warm enough to take the winter protection from around the most tender and the newest shrubs. We did have a little walk around recently with clipboard making notes of any gaps and the size of shrubs or small trees needed to fill them as well as the aspect in relation to sun, shade and exposure to the elements, this gives us an aim (or is that excuse!) to get some new specimens in the coming year.

I do like to have the paths neatly mowed so the visitors don’t get their tootsies too wet and it does show the beds off better, also around the Lower Garden are piles of wood from our heavier pruning which need bringing up to the wood shed so I hope it will be dry enough to use the tractor soon.

In the Lower Garden there is a large bushy sprawling Salix (Willow) which, with the Conifer canopy in that area spreading, has itself been spreading and the majority of the branches had become over 12ft (3.6m) away from the main stems where it was originally planted and was encroaching further onto the path which meant almost constant pruning to be able to get the tractor past without driving into the lake. I decided it was time to take drastic action so we took a lot of the lower branches off the Conifers to allow more light to the base of the Willow then cut any dead out of the Willow to tidy it and with careful manipulation so we didn’t snap the stems we pulled the more pliable of the branches back towards the base under the Conifers and pegged them back. With the help of metal hooks and wooden stakes we fixed some to have a point touching the soil in the hope that they may root in that position, some small stems we wove through larger ones to help hold them in place. I had dreaded the thought of having to cut a lot back but it worked so we hardly had to cut any and I am very pleased with the result, but if it eventually does what I required for it time will only tell.

We will also be looking to preparing the vegetable garden but will not start planting until April when the soil is warmer and the seeds will germinate better. A lot of herbaceous plants have seeded in there since last summer and many of these we will move to other parts of the garden such as the foxgloves which are being moved to a new home in a bed in the shrubberies. This will be under a canopy of Conifers, amongst some small Phormium tenax (New Zealand Flax) which we mass planted, I was not sure if it would work but they are being most obliging in making a good show where not too much else will grow.