Gardening

Co. Landscapers of

G A R D E N D E S I G N S T U D I O

Castle Gardens, New Road, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 5NR

www.thegardensgroup.co.uk thegardensgroup

Spring into action

As the seasons change, the longer and brighter days provide an increasing range of gardening tasks. Now is the time to start planting trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants, as well as sowing seeds for summer bedding plants and potting up plants for tubs and hanging baskets. Keep those little visitors in mind to create a wildlife friendly haven along the way and make sure to put some time aside to give your lawn some love. With our social distancing measures in place, you can pick up your trees, shrubs, seeds and pots any day of the week, during our new opening hours: Monday to Saturday: 9am – 6pm Sunday: 10am – 4:30pm For those still stuck at home, you can place your orders by telephone or via our brand-new Online Store and we’ll deliver free within 25 miles.

01935 814633

store.thegardensgroup.co.uk

COMPOSTING AT HOME

Mike Burks, Managing Director, The Gardens Group

In our greenhouse, we have a large avocado plant that my son has been growing for 7 or 8 years (about the same length of time that he’s been away from home). I read that they take that long before fruiting and so was delighted to spot, when I was watering it the other day, that it was budding up to flower!

It turns out though, that the male and female flowers open with a day between them, which must be designed to encourage cross pollination, and so it may be tricky for us to get fruit from just the one tree. However, with a paint brush and the help of some pollinating insects, who knows?

Quite what the fruit would be like is also an unknown as the plant was grown from a stone and my understanding is that in commercial cropping, plants are grafted, so are from known varieties. This particular stone was from fruit picked up from our farm shop at Brimsmore Gardens. Once eaten, it was sent for composting and the stone germinated in our wormery! I have tried germinating them over a glass of water and that has never been successful, but the wormery seems to be the ideal place for avocado propagation.

I’m not yet planning a meal based on the home

lomiso/Shutterstock

"It’s a sound method of dealing with garden waste and a free of charge material that will improve your garden."

grown avocado but will let you know what happens…

In our garden, we are trialling a number of composting systems. We have an ordinary compost heap which works well for normal grass cuttings, leaves, pruning and other debris from the garden. We use a wooden type with slats, and it looks good in the garden too. We have three: one being filled with this season’s debris; one composting with last season’s waste; the third being emptied and used in the garden.

We also have a hot bin, which my daughter had to send home when she moved house last year. This is ideal for dealing with waste from the house. It is well insulated and has a temperature gauge on the top. As the material composts down, so the temperature rises and, often, we find it at over 50ºC. This breaks down material at an astonishing rate.

Our third method – but in two different style of bins – are wormeries. The first of these is in a dustbin arrangement, with a false floor near the bottom, which allows the liquid to drain from the compost into a sump; this liquid can be used as a simple fertiliser in the garden. Above this is where the waste to be composted is laid. The sort of material that wormeries easily deal with is kitchen waste such as vegetable peelings into which worms (usually tiger worms) work hard munching away at the plant material. As they munch away, they move upwards into the new material that is put in the bin. Once the bin is full, the top layer is put to one side whilst the compost below is used and then it’s placed back at the bottom to start all over again. Once you have the worms, it’s a bit like having your own starter kit for a sourdough loaf – although, that comparison has now probably put you off your loaf!

The second style of bin is a series of deep trays which are stacked on each other and filled one at a time. The worms work away from the bottom tray moving upwards as each tray is added. Once all of the trays are full, the lower trays can be emptied, and the top bin is moved to the bottom to start the process again.

The compost that comes out of wormeries looks fabulous but should be used as a soil improver rather than a potting compost. It’s also a sound method of dealing with garden waste rather than sending it off for landfill or for the council to compost and is a free of charge material that will improve your garden.

And, from time to time, you get surprises such as avocados!

ROOMS OUTSIDE

Alan Dodge, Company of Landscapers

Designing and building gardens has been one of my life’s passions. Brought up on a dairy farm in Melbury Osmond, there was no pedigree for the subject; milking cows, mending tractors and tilling the land were the order of the day. The only connection I can draw is that I unwittingly grew up in a beautiful place, subconsciously taking in nature’s ways in terms of scale, shape, form, textures, colours and even the differences in local building stone. Finding myself in London after studying at University, I took a part-time job clearing the carnage of the great storm of November ’87. Gardens, as well as the countryside, had been ravaged but once the destruction was cleared, I found myself being asked my opinion on new layouts and ideas by their owners. I found this came quite naturally to me. Wimbledon library had four or five books on the subject at the time - they probably have a whole section now - which I studied and soon was able to put forward designs and sketches.

Thirty-four years on you’d think I would have built up a vast catalogue of solutions for any conceivable situation that presented itself as far as a new garden was concerned. A new plan or layout would fly onto the drawing board with ease, in a matter of hours with little or no effort… if only! The truth is that every garden is different, presenting different challenges: soils, levels, aspects and many other variables. I have, however, developed over the years some straightforward design principles which I think have stood me in good stead and can be seen replicated in many popular gardens all over the country.

Having decided on what style your garden will follow, usually dictated by the style of property but also

Antonina Potapenko/Shutterstock

taking into consideration the owner’s taste, personality and views on how they will use their outside space, what you have to work with regarding the situation of the house and boundaries, as well as levels, must be transcribed onto paper.

Principle 1: Rooms outside Rooms outside is one of my favourite ways at looking at how a garden can be laid out. A house without any dividing walls inside would be a little odd if you could see the kitchen, lounge, hallways and bedrooms as soon as you entered the front door. Likewise, it’s a good plan to divide your garden up into different rooms, if you have space. Outside, of course, walls and fences can be used, particularly in larger gardens, but more subtle methods also work. Changes in surface, such as from paving to the lawn for instance, can be effective; a low box hedge with clipped topiary balls, highlighting a gap through which another ‘room’ is perceived, works very well. Maybe the vegetable area, if you have one, can be divided from the rest of the garden with espalier apples, pears or soft fruit, which are both attractive when in flower and provide tasty and attractive fruit. Differences in level can also help; a raised terrace gives a wonderful vantage point of all or part of a garden - a room in itself. And of course, the greatest trick of all, the Ha-Ha - levels permitting, an unseen ditch at the end of the garden to divide it from the surrounding countryside, but make it look like it belongs to you!

Principle 2: Don’t try too hard It is difficult to force creativity. Creating the right atmosphere can help, also being organised and having all the facts, but the art, for that is what it is, may happen instantly or take days to filter through. How many of us have found that walking away from an impasse, and even sleeping on it, has allowed the brain to unravel the confusion and upon returning to it the next morning the solution is straightforward? I can certainly vouch for this. Gut feeling, more often than not, should be trusted, especially as you get to know the site and the ‘feel’ for the spaces you want to create.

Principle 3: The new visitor How would a new visitor explore the garden? This always intrigues me; what draws people to investigate new spaces? I think it’s a range of things depending upon the individual. A focal point of a statue may draw one’s eye to go and inspect it more closely. The gap in that hedge or border may have a view beyond to open countryside which you’ll want to take in. When you turn back, perhaps a pathway may lead a different route back or the sound of water will guide you to a yet unseen area. The curve of a bed can lead the eye and then the feet from a terrace, onto the lawn, where maybe a quite sheltered seating area can be spotted under a tree, ideal for snoozing or reading a book.

Employing these basic, if not simplistic principals, together with an adherence to more conventional design criteria such as scale, proportion and practicalities, can combine to make a garden layout interesting, intriguing and exciting.

DIARY OF A FLOWER FARMER

Paul Stickland, Blackshed Flowers

As we head towards the fourth anniversary of Black Shed this April, our preparation for spring has been very different this year. We’re still sowing and germinating seeds in the studio, at home in Sherborne, but thanks to our wonderful polytunnel, we’ve been able to grow a really early crop of gorgeous ranunculi, anemones and tulips. We’re not using any heat to bring them on; the doors have been open in all but the most inclement weather. The simple shelter it offers allows these early spring gems the chance to really thrive at a time when we are usually just dreaming of that thrilling first flush of flowers. So, this year we’ll have wonderful flowers available for Mother’s Day and Easter. Exciting!

As the world changed last spring, bringing the loss of all those weddings and events, we had to rapidly change our business model. We were lucky our decision to offer mail order tulips, anemones and ranunculi was a huge and unexpected success. Finding a courier that offered reliable and careful overnight delivery led us to offering our bouquets by post and we’ve sent out an incredible number, all over the UK, since then. Flowers by post is definitely a thing for us now.

So, what else are we planning for this year? It’s very difficult to predict! We have a huge number of wedding enquiries to start with. I feel so sorry for the brides, grooms and families; no-one knows whether their endlessly altered and revised plans will come to fruition, but we’ll be there for them when they’re ready. We’re already sending out our spring flowers by post and our bouquets are flying out as usual. Our dried flowers were very popular again last year, and we’ll need to increase our production and harvest this year to meet the demand. We used every fresh flower on the farm last year, so this year we’re growing even more. We’ve sown more seeds, bought more perennials, divided existing ones, planted dozens of shrubs and trees for foliage. Our dahlia range will increase, with many new varieties amongst our tried and tested favourites. We’ll have gladiolus and irises galore, tuberoses and freesias in the tunnel and an extraordinary collection of chrysanthemums for late summer and autumn. There should be plenty of flowers! I’m sure we’ll find a use for them too, but it’s important to make it as easy as possible for customers to find out about us and what we do. Which is why I’ve spent rather a lot of time this winter creating a new website and online shop – feeling slightly guilty about sitting in the warm, at the computer, whilst Helen, Emma, Jenny and Jack toil away on the freezing wet farm, of course. The task of creating a website to promote all the different aspects of Black Shed makes us realise how far we’ve come in these four years. There are pages for bouquets, weddings and funerals, fresh flowers and dried, house flowers and installations, flowers by month, a natty online store, hundreds of pictures of our flowers and floristry, hopeful pages full of workshops and events, garden openings, pick-your-own days…

Extraordinary to think that behind each of those images lies a story – a glimpse into our community. A glorious summer wedding, a sad passing, a golden wedding, an engagement, a new job, a gift on retirement, a ‘thank you’ for lockdown kindness. Flowers play an important role in so many aspects of our lives and it’s wonderful to be part of that. Even delivering a simple bouquet to a surprised and delighted recipient is a joy I doubt I’ll tire of soon!

If you want to read more about our lives in flowers, you can read all my Sherborne Times articles on the new website; they pretty much sum up our unexpected and wonderful adventure here at Blackmarsh Farm.

blackshed.flowers @blackshedhelen @blackshedflowers