Visitors and staff alike may have noticed a sudden and rapid renovation occurring in the Potager at RHS Garden Rosemoor. A new wall here, new paving there and sadly the disappearance of long standing Vitis and Pergolas along with the mournful removal of an iconic Wisteria macrobotrys that has adorned the central structure for the best part of the last 20 years.

 It’s not as bad as it sounds though and there’s no need to panic as the key to renovation is to get your target area to a stage from which it can be developed. This sometimes requires a seemingly drastic reduction of what is already in place so that you have wider parameters to work within and more scope for improvement.
In the Potager, however, it is a case of less is more and the four square iron pergolas that have been removed create a more open feel to the garden and allow the design to flow into that of the Cottage and Herb Gardens more harmoniously.

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Now is one of my favourite times of year as spring starts and the days are getting longer  it is time to start seed sowing and all the promise that holds for the coming year.

I have been busy on the nursery getting the seeds sown ready for the planting season. It started with sowing sweet peas, one seed into a 7cm pot on 15th February but there is still plenty of time to get them going. Ours will soon need potting up into 1 litre pots and tying into canes. Many people set their sweet peas off in the autumn but ours are ready and waiting to get out in the garden by the end of May and always put on a good display in the garden.
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Next time you are near the PBLC site, look out for the newly planted ‘fedge’; it’s a cross between a fence and a hedge, made of willow and you can see it contouring around the Willow bed.

This bed was planted up last winter with a selection of hard wood cuttings, and they have established well in what was a very wet year.

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At the start of February I swapped the cold and damp winter weather of North Devon for the far hotter and drier climate of South Africa’s late summer.  I spent 17 days adventuring around some of the furthest reaches of South Africa’s Eastern Cape, covering some 2273 kilometres; travelling from the coast at Port Elizabeth to the high Drakensburg Mountains overlooking the Eastern Cape and bordering on to Lesotho. I took the opportunity to climb the highest mountain in the Eastern Cape some 3001 metres above sea level, then ventured back to the coast at Kei Mouth to explore the coastal plants of South Africa; whilst visiting everywhere, it seemed in between. This included venturing over South Africa’s highest road at Naude’s Nek at 2500 metres above sea level on dirt roads that seemed to have been scratched into the mountain side with shear drops on every corner. To give you an idea of height, Ben Nevis is only 1344 metres above sea level.

South Africa is well known for its never ending array of plants, one that has strongly interested me for years as a horticulturalist,  South Africa seems to produce a never ending list of genus, that we all enjoy seeing grown in gardens all over the world and botanist continue to find new species on a regular basis even today. Yet very few horticulturalists and gardeners get to view them growing in their natural environment, often tucked away in minute plant populations in some extremely remote areas with the ever present risk of extinction caused by humans over grazing areas with animals or developing areas of land for roads and buildings; so the opportunity to fulfil the ambition of visiting South Africa was one not to be missed

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Did you ever wonder what the saying ‘Horses for courses’ actually meant? I discovered that it is an old English idiom that means the right method or tool for the right situation. Well, here at RHS Garden Rosemoor we have the perfect example of horses for courses, in the actual form of horses!

Remember the tree felling and brash burning that ensued before Christmas? It was done with the intention of removing hazardous trees that had been killed or were dying due to Dendroctonus micans infestation. I did tell you to watch this space and here it is. As a continuation of that effort, with the brash burnt, the final thing to remove is the felled and cleaned trees

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At the beginning of January, we decided to give the allotment plots in the Peter Buckley Learning Centre (PBLC) vegetable growing area a spruce up for this year’s growing season by boarding out each plot.

The vegetable growing area has multiple uses; however the main one is by Rosemoor’s own community allotment course. We offer ten plots to members of the local community to come and learn the skills they need to successfully grow their own veg. For £50 each, the allotment keepers are given a small plot of ground, all the tools and equipment and the manure and compost they require. The seeds are generously donated by Thompson and Morgan for each plot holder. The allotment keepers also receive one tutorial a month from one of the fruit and veg. team on what they need to be doing at that time of year, from soil cultivation and seed sowing to pest and diseases to harvesting their crops which they get to keep and enjoy. The course runs from February through to October, with a new group of people starting each year.

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The mild weather before and immediately after Christmas has hastened the flowering of many of the shrubs in the Winter Garden at Rosemoor and the Hamamelis, or witch hazels, have been putting on an especially dazzling display of colour.

Pale yellow-flowered Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Arnold Promise’ AGM and red-flowered H. x intermedia ‘Diane’ AGM are two of the star performers in the Winter Garden, although neither has the strong, spicy fragrance of H. x intermedia ‘Pallida’ AGM

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For the last few years we have been finding a new innovative way of cutting the tops of our ‘New Garden’ hedges. With the hedges slowly creeping up each year and the difficult access, coupled with the various dangers of using ladders; using a hired M.E.W.P (Mobile Elevated Work Platform)or cherry picker known to some, saves time, effort and  increases productivity.

Armed with risk assessments, cones and more safety barriers than you can shake a stick at, our team of trained operatives begin work

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It’s that beautiful time of year once again, where frosty mists hang in the valleys; roaring fires keep the cold out and warm our toes; and many people decorate a traditional Christmas tree with lights and baubles to brighten up the long nights.
 

At RHS Garden Rosemoor however, it’s a slight variation on a theme. Instead of a warm cosy fire in the grate, it is blazing bonfires and instead of decorating a quaint little spruce, we’re burning them! This is a continuation of our on-going battle against the dreaded Great Spruce Bark Beetle (Dendroctonus micans)

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Over the course of a weekend a few of the garden staff started the first phase of an upgrade to Rosemoor’s car park. Our job was to erect fencing around a section of the perimeter of the car park, leaving walk-through gaps for easy access to the picnic tables on the grass. The new fencing will prevent cars from driving onto the surrounding lawn areas which ruins the edge and turns the grass into mud. Any sturdy fence can be used for this job but we chose wooden knee-high fencing, or bird mouth fencing, as it is solid, leaves a neat finish and isn’t so high as to block a view.

The first part of the project was to ensure that precise measurements were made so that the fence posts were the correct distances apart. We used a motorised earth auger to create neat holes for the posts to go in. An auger is a drilling device that, due to its rotating screw blade, is able to remove the earth that is being drilled. Despite this, one of us needed to be on hand with a small shovel to remove any excess soil. Some of the drilling on the edge of the road was tough in places as the ground was incredibly stony. Perseverance was key, however, as to avoid a wonky fence it was important to make sure that all of the holes were at the same level

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Rosemoor plays host to many interesting birds throughout the year, both resident and migrating. On many occasions, whilst tending to the pot displays on the Veranda of Rosemoor House,  I have witnessed visits from our nuthatches. Here are some photos I took for you to have a look at…

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On 5th October at Rosemoor Garden, it was FREE Friday!

Free Friday offers the public a chance to come and experience the wonderful garden of Rosemoor without paying the usual entry fee at this special event

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On Sunday 7 October RHS Garden Rosemoor held another popular Apple Day. One of the stars of the show had to be Hallwood Farm Fresh Veg and their lovely pigs.

Throughout the day on Sunday there were two orchard pigs in the Fruit Garden Field to entertain and educate visitors, kindly bought by Richard and Ruth Kelsey of Hallwood Fresh Veg. When these pigs arrived in the morning they were nameless so numerous families entered a competition to name them, the prize was a case of Rosemoor Apple Juice. Judged by Rosemoor’s Events Team and Peter Earl, Horticultural Team Leader of the Fruit and Veg Garden Team the winning names are … drum roll please … Rooter and Hooter by the Wilkins Family of Taunton, Somerset

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Visitors to Rosemoor over the past few weeks will have noticed that the box hedges in the centre of the Queen Mother’s Rose Garden have been removed. The hedges had been showing symptoms of box blight for a while, but the amount of die-back had recently reached the point where the hedges were looking unsightly and the decision to remove them had to be made.

Box blight is a disease of box plants caused by two different fungi. In all cases the leaves will turn brown and fall, leaving bare patches. In some cases black streaks will appear on the young stems and they will then die back

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