I love this time of year. The mild weather over the last couple of weeks has really got things going in the garden. Over half term we had huge numbers of happy visitors enjoying the butterflies, bulbs, scented flowers and general ambience.
Hepaticas in the Alpine Display House are looking wonderful this week and the snowdrops are at their peak. Hellebores show their pretty faces and when the sun shines, so do the crocuses. On the Rock Bank the Cyclamen coum create a pink carpet visible from some distance, and the small irises are incredibly eye-catching.
It’s the time of year to get growing. In the Model Vegetable Garden we’ve already sown radish, spinach and cut’n’come again crops in the small greenhouses and we’re busy preparing for the forthcoming growing season. This is the perfect time to be selecting and chitting potatoes (ours are chitting in our propagation houses) and next Tuesday, 3rd March, the Plant Centre is holding a Potato Day. Here, you’ll have the chance to pick the brains of Jim England, ex RHS Superintendent of Trials, Neil Hope from the National Vegetable Society and Colin Randel from Thompson & Morgan Seeds. You can also choose from a selection of over 50 different seed potato varieties to try growing yourself.
This all leads on nicely to our Grow Your Own weekend (sponsored by NS&I) on 7th and 8th March. (Saturday 7th is free entry, Sunday 8th is normal entry). This is the third year we’ve run it and it is proving to be incredibly popular. This year we will continue to encourage visitors to grow vegetables, but also give growing fruit a try. We have wonderful model fruit and vegetable gardens here, plus our Fruit Field full of over 700 different apple cultivars, plus pears, plums, a vineyard, and more.
This year also marks the 200th anniversary of the Bramley apple and we are planning various events around this too. And we have the recently published RHS book, Grow Your Own Fruit (Mitchell Beazley) by Carol Klein available in the Gift Shop to show you how to do it at home.
I hope this inspires you to get out there and enjoy your outdoor space, no matter how big or small, and get growing.