oldherbaceous wrote:Morning Clive, good luck with the Snowdrop walk.
Hope the weather isn't to bad there, as it's pretty gloomy here this morning.
Thank you Old H',
It was a drizzly wet lot by afternoon...so not the best conditions....
However, 164 folk attended the walk...and seeing as that was divided 3 ways for the Boss, Head Gardener and myself to take a party each that meant for rather large groups to walk and talk around the grounds.... I think we only had just a few more attendees last year and that was with better conditions....infact it means with such sized groups that it couldn't be a walk and talk but a stop, talk, walk to next station for further talk....so actually, secretly,
we did breath a little sigh of relief as could sunnyshine have meant more attendees?? which would have been problematical for us to deal with...as we are not quite Hodsock...and our toilets are not quite so grand relative to the Hodsock giant Snowdrop vinyl wall coverings.
.
Talking of those giant snowdrops I was going to photo them the other year when i was there...but I did not want to get caught with a camera in there.
Anyway, our Snowdrops put on a good a good show today.
..sometimes they can look brighter under low light conditions and no peering into low sunlight...or any sunlight.
.. Aconites on show but not open...
...My group started in front of the main conservatory and I tend to ask a few "research" questions to gauge just who I am talking too...today most had visited the gardens before but only a few hands for attending a Snowdrop walk before..
Thus the talk could start with references to seeing right across the garden with areas of open digging..and Rose garden pruned but not quite fully forked through etc....then down to the back wood where we don't actually garden as such and is normally out of bounds to visitors...snowdrops are in large "natural" drifts..who knows how they got there.?..perhaps tipped from a gardens barrow years ago.?....as this area has been and still is an area at one end of compost/leaf heaps, bonfire, soil exchange herbaceous plant rotting down area....
Then across the orchard where the plantings of Snowdrop are a little more recent and are still to enlarged clumps from the small plantings 4 years ago and quite a dark corner in which the bright white snowdrops look good in.....
Across the kitchen garden with further look at the open views in lieu of summer fullness which the group were more regularly acquainted with...all pruned down and
nearly all dug.
..a look here also at the good and bad work of the recent frosts...
To the pond side and down to the Churchyard with its long time collection of Snowdrop drifts..with a lot of doubles...
....back to the main garden along the East shrubbery path with its small Aconite group..and pathside Hazel weaving...and onto the main lawn with freshly added stripes
..and so to the main area of Snowdrops...major drifts under the big old Horse Chestnut accompanied with many more Aconites...and a new area of Snowdrops that has developed...not planted but they have moved themselves there in the time I have worked in the gardens.. A large Beech tree had been removed from this area and in marched the Snowdrops..or rather something perhaps marched in with some seed?? from the nearby long established drifts.??
A walk through this area on the winding grass path....and to the front of the house...and out to the courtyard for mug of soup...passing the unusual very green leafed Snowdrops (don't ask which green leafed one
) but a relatively recent gift to my previous employer from a Dutch bulb growing farming colleague....
So that's the story.............
..Alternative easy read version.....
Thank you Old H' much cold drizzly weather but seemed to go ok...
..and more SNOW forecast..
....
......Roll on Spring..(keeping to topic
)
Clive..
