'keeping on top'.....

Wonderful wet rain has continued from April through into May. You can almost hear our sandland guzzling it up.

The fourteen month drought has truly ended and despite the cold, the plants are responding.

So as well as continuing to develop the gardens (whilst elsewhere on site big diggers excavate our foundations), just 'keeping on top' is a challenge.

A great day on Wednesday...

As well as pricking out yet more seedlings, Jill cleared all of our beds by hand with our Punjabi 'dachti' tool and then began edging the border onto the orchard.

I have been clearing nettles from the vegetable garden area but grabbed 35 minutes up in Picnic Wood and scythed 200 square metres before the rain became so steady that I had to give in...

 And throughout, the music of the Mistle Thrush echoing around the woodland: short, evocative, liquid phrases delivered from the tree tops even in the heavy rain.

the elegance of simple flowers

It's my dream to make Cordwood an exceptional garden - or series of gardens - over the coming years.

 

I've blogged about some of the structural work we've been doing to create different gardens ... but gardens are nothing without their plants so chance for a quick catch up on work done in the past few days.

 

My preference is for the simple elegance of species forms rather than blousey cultivars. Insects love the simpler forms too and often can't get at pollen and nectar in 'doubles'.

We have a section of the site that has mature silver birch (Betula pendula) and this is a great place to sit and have sandwiches in the heat of the summer and early autumn - hence 'Picnic Wood'. Work clearing brambles and nettles from beneath the trees and removal of some of the seedling sycamores (Acer pseudoplatinoides) (cheers Mike!) has created an area that is aching for our native Bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta). So, here's Jill (left) planting the first two metres of bluebells .. thanks to an offer on Tesco clubcard points! The intention is to have a serpentine stream of blue flowers snaking through the trees over the coming years.

Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) have now finished flowering and so it is time to lift and split them. This increases vigour and it is possible to double their numbers each year by doing this. I've transplanted and divided clumps remaining on the allotment (right) and will nurture these until they can be transferred to Cordwood next year.

 

Primrose (Primula vulgaris) (left) are just the prettiest flowers. Picnic Wood and other areas will be studded with these in future but first I must allow the flowers to finish. In June I will divide the clumps, getting several plants from each clump and nurture them before planting out in the autumn. I will also collect the 'green' seeds and sow these into peat free potting compost to make plants for planting out in the early spring.