As part of the on-going development of the copse in the Bicentenary Arboretum my colleagues and I rescued a rustic style See-Saw from its long term resting place in the yard, knocked the cobwebs and began to install it ready for the summer.

Phil Peard skillfully maneuvred a three ton excavator between the trees to dig out a suitable trench ready for the ton of concrete required to ensure that the See-Saw remained steady in the ground. John Bridge tirelessly mixed load after load and transported them to the site to the accompaniment of “just one more load John”

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Hedges are sneaky… Even when you promise yourself that they won’t be allowed to get too big, somehow they always do…!

That’s what happened in Rosemoor’s Spiral Garden to our Chinese privet hedge, Ligustrum sinense. It is a major feature of the garden and was planted in 1991. Echoing the design it does literally spiral outwards, subtly gaining height as it does so. Unfortunately it had long since ceased to be a thing of beauty and had turned into our version of the Berlin Wall, (old joke I know!). At about 75 metres long and up to 3 metres tall it took an age to cut and created far too much shade.
Something had to be done! 
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The new information boards for the Bicentenary Arboretum have at last been put in position.

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If you have been to Rosemoor lately you may have noticed the disappearance of a few trees and neat stacks of brash and logs in their place.

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We often have art exhibitions at Rosemoor, but during the winter months, the Garden itself has been the backdrop for over 60 sculptures, large and small, by a variety of different artists, working in wood, metal, resin, glass, fabrics and stoneware. To coincide with this, the Education team here devised a schools workshop to link with it, as part of our curricular education programme. Visiting schools have tended to take the workshop in the morning and view the Winter Sculpture Exhibition in the afternoon.

School children are encouraged to work individually and in small groups to look closely at colour, shape, detail and natural objects before creating their own shapes and sculptures. Initially, they look at a range of pictures covering the work of several artists who work with natural materials – leaves, flowers, trees, turf, pebbles and willow, which opens their eyes and stretches their imaginations. Out in the garden, they each have a small sticky card on which they collect small samples of colour from plant materials found on the ground. Despite it being winter there is still a very wide range of colour available, though in smaller quantities.

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Lady Anne’s team have been tackling Hairy Bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta) the scourge of the Mediterranean Garden.  This ephemeral weed has really taken advantage of the mild weather and seems to have germinated at a monstrous rate. 

Hairy Bittercress can mature and set seed very quickly and is capable of many generations a year. Its life cycle really gets a hold in autumn time when it sets seed prolifically.  In an average winter its growth is checked by the cold weather but with only a hand full of frosts worth mentioning, it had taken hold and formed a green carpet in some beds.  Armed with patience, hand forks and kneeling pads the problem has been addressed.
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RHS Rosemoor’s winter sculpture exhibition runs until 26th February so there’s still time to come along and enjoy the many different works placed throughout the garden!

We’ve brought together twenty talented sculptors and around a hundred fascinating pieces so come along and see what you think.
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To improve the range and diversity of the roses growing here at Rosemoor we decided to open up an area that has always been a little problematic for us; the path between the Herb Garden and the Shrub Rose Garden (SRG) which used to have an 8ft hedge running down each side; creating a rather dark and uninviting area of the garden.

My suggestion was to open this up by taking out the hedge bordering the SRG and replacing it with rose arches so we could grow a much more vigorous rose than our catenary swags allow. This gave me the opportunity to grow an old favourite of many, Rosa 'Madame Alfred Carrière' AGM,” this is an old variety that has proved to be reliable and if there is one thing that we have learned from gardening in this Devon valley is that reliability always wins. We also intend to use two others, R. “Narrow Water” a repeat flowering rambler of moderate height and a pillar rose of 7ft R. WARM WELCOME 'Chewizz' AGM. 

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The Fruit and Veg. garden has just acquired a weather vane, courtesy of a donation from one of our visitors. As well as telling us the wind direction, the vane will also let our visitors see the orientation of the garden, which is very important as the direction that any wall or fence faces will determine what subjects will successfully grow there. So our south facing wall (which is in full sun all day, except when it’s raining) is home to our peaches, nectarines and figs. While our east facing wall, which only sees the sun up to mid-day, is perfectly adequate for trained gooseberries, red currants and morello cherries.
Our donation came from the collection at the funeral of one of our visitors who died a few months short of his 100th birthday. And it was his daughter who wanted to give the money to Rosemoor’s  Fruit and Vegetable garden in his memory. This is what she said in her letter:
“My Father loved visiting Rosemoor, especially the vegetable garden, and by way of thanks, I am hoping you can use this money to help maintain this area.
Rosemoor gave Dad great pleasure and as he became frailer I would take him around your beautiful gardens with his wheelchair. It always cheered him up and made him feel better especially if we stopped for lunch. (He liked to eat what he saw growing!)
I shall miss my Dad but will always have happy memories on my regular visits to Rosemoor.”

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The Peter Buckley Learning Centre (PBLC) here at Rosemoor took another step forward last week, as another area turned from bare topsoil to a more attractive, greener environment.

How???  Well, with the help of over 150 square metres of turf that has appeared on the seating space in the allotment plots and the wildlife garden. Over the past few weeks Pete Earl and myself have laid four paved surfaces on to which picnic benches will sit, surrounding this was bare soil, which doesn’t make an ideal surface to enjoy the area. So, earlier last week pallet loads of turf arrived and we  rolled out roll after roll of turf on to what a few weeks ago was a far from perfect  ground that resembled a building site. But with some hard work and more soil, we turned it into something that is far more suited to turf laying

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