What's all the Fussell about?

Any old iron . . . cast around 1860, found in a heritage tool seller's stall in Honiton last week; now landed less than a mile from where it was forged and ground.

http://www.fussells.org/04story.html

http://webapp1.somerset.gov.uk/her/details.asp?prn=23853

Eastnor Castle 2009

BigChill Snapshots:

Festival Time Again

Summer must well and truly be here as we are off to WOMAD, Charlton Park next week to do all the flowers for the artist dressing rooms and hanging out areas. Always something to look forward to, although this year I'm going to try to be more organised and sort the flowers into arrangements before I go, rather than turn up with a Landrover bursting with blooms and then have a five hour arranging stint on arrival. I also promise not to shriek too much as we buggy them around to the stages. Same thing at the Big Chill festival a fortnight later...pleeeease come out and play sunshine.

Frome Festival

Frome is fab I've decided. We don't live there but I'm angling for a move there in the not too distant future. There's always loads going on and this year's festival was no exception. We took a market stall to the Green Fair where we practically sold out of flowers and met lots of lovely people. I had forgotten how much work it is doing market stalls. Since we've take on the Walled Garden we haven't done any this year, a case of not being able to be in two places at once and our weekends in the garden being so busy. It is exciting though, I always get nervous beforehand and am convinced that we won't sell a thing and always come home with a glow and very few flowers. This year Kevin McCloud from Grand Designs opened the Green Fair but seemed to forget to come and say hello, I tried to catch his eye but he probably thought I was just being strange and stayed far away.



Tea Time



Mmmmm look at that chocolate cake. Remember we're open every weekend over the summer for tea, coffee, cordials and cake.

Relax on the straw bales in the sunshine and watch the Bees being busy.





Here comes the Sun
After two years of quite frankly miserable summers this year's good weather is even better than gorgeous. It's been a bit too hot for the young plants in the greenhouse even with all the vents open and the poor things have fried if I've been late with the watering in the morning. I've had to snip off the sunscorched leaves, muttering apologies and promising not to spray water around at midday again.

We've relined the pond....yay, it was just a muddy hole with a cracked liner and about 6 inches of fish poo and looked awful in the middle of the garden. June was just so busy we didn't get the time to deal with it but now we have and it looks great (if a little green).

It was very tempting to get in and have a swim but i kept remebering all those little stones hiding underneath the liner and didn't dare risk it.

I do, I do and I do again
Eight days, four weddings, two funerals and loads of gift bouquets....aaaagh, thank goodness for Rosie helping out. The end of May, beginning of June is Peony time. Beautiful, beautiful Peonies immediately lending a touch of glamour and a subtle, sweet scent. Our first big wedding of the Summer was definitely a Peony wedding, we used bowls of pink and white peonies on the tables, Peony and Sweet Pea bouquets and church arrangements with a beautiful dark raspberry pink Peony throughout.
Then we had Jane and Mark's wedding at Priston Mill, a lovely old water mill that suited our flowers perfectly. We painted up large baked bean tins, dressed them with raffia and filled them with flowers. They looked gorgeous.

We need to gather examples of all our wedding pictures together and put a wedding page on the website methinks....

May

April Fun

Can't believe it's been a month since I last posted a blog. After a furiously busy Mother's Day when the local post office groaned under the influx of bouquets needing posting April kicked off with Belle and Graham's beautiful wedding at Stourhead. I'm waiting on some proper flower photos but in the mean time have these ones taken in the shed.
We used pretty white baskets for the table centerpieces overflowing with gorgeous deep burgundy Peony Tulips (Uncle Tom), Anemones and cream scented narcissi. The morning had me clambering up the fireplace in the reception hall hanging on by my toes attaching a spring flower garland, fortunately I just had it in place and the ivy swept off the floor about 3 minutes before the newly weds walked in...phew

We used the baskets in a slightly different way for a wedding at the end of March when we had them planted up with spring flowers, delicate Cardamine, Primroses, Fritillaria, Pulmonaria "Sissinghurst White". This was great because the couple were able to give the baskets as gifts at the end of the day. The flowers could then be planted out into gardens giving a lovely long lasting memories of the day.

Easter Monday shone forth upon the brilliant Mells Daffodil Day. We had decided to serve tea and cake in the Walled garden on the day so the week previous had me up to my elbows in flour and eggs. Chef extrordinaire Charlotte kept a close eye on proceedings and guided me on the secrets of chocolate fudge cake icing, lemon drizzleing and toasting coconut and between us we baked up about fifty cakes.

I wanted the garden to look as pretty as possible so as well as some last minute panicy weeding Sunday had me making up table flowers
and Monday morning started at about 5.30am setting out the tables, firing up the urn and generally having a panic.












By 11am we were packed out and all the cake had been eaten by 3pm. I can't remember ever feeling so tired at the end of a day.


It was a great day though and we're already getting excited about next year.

Mr Bishop from the Bath Natural Theatre Co delighted visitors with his Flowerpot Man

Now the greenhouse beckons, the overcast weather forecast for the rest of this week will be perfect for all that pricking out that needs doing. I'm even beginning to eye up a few things that might be able to be planted out soon.

The first indoor sweet pea flower buds are budding but I cruelly pinched them out. It's too soon for them to flower, they need to build up some strength first but it's a sign that the year is moving apace.

I'll leave you with this bit of Spring

Spring is here (very nearly almost)

And we're off........hurrah, opened the doors to the Walled Garden on 1st March and started taking orders for this seasons flowers. It's lovely working with blooms again after what seems ages working with soil, sheds and pots. Although there were many times this winter when I raised by eyes to the heavens and thanked all things good that I didn't have to put up any more polytunnels . Shudder, last year's pain still runs deep.

The spring posies (pictured left) are selling well and I'm making abundant use of all the glorious Hellebores in the garden. There's a trick to giving Hellebores a long vase life, but I'm not going to tell you...you'll have to come on one of the courses and find out...ha! Anyway they are a beautiful dark purple and look great with the equally dark and mysterious Green Iris that I've bought in from Cornwall.

It's been a bit strange buying some English flowers in from other sources but I just haven't got enough of our own flowers at the moment to meet demand. Our Anemones are doing well now and the Tulips are budding up to my amazement. I didn't think any of them would cope with the waterlogged conditions up the farm but they seem to have survived so I'll reward them by lifting them in the summer and briinging them down to the more hospitable soil in the garden. The Cerinthe is boldly beginning to strut it's stuff so I'll begin to include it's lovely blue leaves in arrangements soon and as soon as the Euphorbia stops looking so raggedy we can get a nice lime green injection into some of the bouquets...then we know Spring has arrived.

The Sweet Peas are in...phew, I planted half of them at the farm in the tunnel and half outside in the garden. Hopefully this will extend the season by a couple of weeks. I've never grown cordon Sweet peas outside before but I've been told that their colour is more vibrant without the polythene to fiulter out some of the lightwaves....we'll wait and see.

Busy week next week for Mother's Day, Jon and I are off leafleting some Farmer's Markets this weekend to spread our good word and I think we are getting some radio coverage as well so we could be very very busy. Mustn't forget my own mum .....wouldn't that be awful sending flowers to everyone else's mum and not mine!!

We've got our annual Soil Association inspection next week as well so I'll probably spend this weekend checking through paperwork making sure all the T's are dotted and I's crossed (ooops). They're always really nice and usually really helpful. Hopefully next week will also bring some sunshine and warmer temperatures. I'm desperately trying to hold back on sowing too much because everything I have sown so far is sulking and refusing to germinate and I'm chomping at the bit to get going. Hmmm, I'll remind myself about that in 4 weeks time when everything has goine crazy.

Frozen February

That'll teach me for feeling overconfident in January, won't it!! Just as I was getting on top of all the jobs needing doing now we're frozen solid and have been for nearly ten days. It has all been looking a bit pretty though. Digging and rotovating have had to stop but I have been able to get on with some other tasks.

At the end of January I journeyed down to Westonzoyland (what a fab name) to Somerset Willow Growers www.willowgrowers.co.uk to buy some willow to make a screen in the Walled Garden. It went a bit wonky as I went round the corner but overall I was quite pleasesd at the end. we'll see if it's still standing in a year's time...hmmmm.

We got all the apple trees pruned and had a couple of great bonfires, dug out the remains of the previous tenant's polytunnels and got down to preparing the soil for planting. the aim is to have all the ground prep completed by the end of February so I can spend most of March and April up at the farm sowing and growing this year's flowers.

We've got a busy Spring lined up . The flower selling season kicks off on the 1st March with Anenomes, Tulpis, Ranunculus and Narcissi. All our bulbs are coming along nicely but I don't think we will have nearly enough so we've also sourced some lovely growers down in Cornwall who we will be buying from during March. The Walled Garden will be open every Sunday from 10am to 4pm from 1st March so do pop in for a visit and say "Hi".

A New Year and a New Garden

Well here we are again and here we go again. The new year has brought with it a new garden and some very chilly mornings. We picked up the keys to the walled garden on the 2nd January and immediately went exploring and making plans. It's a beautiful spot with half of the garden planted up with herbaceous perennials and the other half bare and ready to be planted up with annuals.

We'll have to be clever with our planting plans this year as it will take a couple of years for this site to become certified organic which means of course that none of the flowers cropped from here can be sold as organic for the next two seasons. We're keeping the organic land at the farm for the foreseeable future so plan to split the planting between the two but with most of the annuals down at the garden so they can benefit from the sheltered, warmer microclimate. Hopefully, most of our customers won't mind us mixing the flowers but if so they'll be able to chose from a more limited range. Phew it's going to be busy managing two sites this year.

Our most exciting discovery was this secret herbaceous border hidden behind the south wall. It must have originally been used for peaches and other difficult to ripen fruit trees as there are fireplaces at intervals which would have been lit to warm the stone. I spent a fair few years obsessing about kitchen gardens and visiting as many as possible but I don't think I've seen anything quite like it before. Talk about a sunny border...it can't get sunnier than that.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I might have some keen friends who will be happy to come and help in exchange for armfuls of flowers. This would be a lovely project on just on its own.

It's difficult to get a good picture of this half of the garden but this is where the real work will be going on. Fortunately the previous tenants had polytunnels in here and most of the soil has been covered with groundcover sheeting for a significant time. This means that apart from a couple of brambles trying to get a hold around the edge there are no perennial weeds. Compared to my luscious crops of Docks at the farm this feels like heaven. The plan for January and February is to get this tidied up, prune all the fruit trees, rotavate the bare soil and get all the plant supports in place before March madness begins.
Brrrr better get down there........