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........
