HATFIELD PARK & GARDEN Andrew Turvey HEAD OF PARK AND GARDENS
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020 was a year for consolidation and to build on the good foundations that we had made in merging the park and garden team. The team had made great progress in enhancing the presentation of the estate, sharing resources, knowledge and team work. This was following what had been a very busy 2019. As we started to see the effects of the pandemic, our thoughts turned to protecting the team whilst also ensuring we able to continue to maintain our standards. Unfortunately, we had to ask our volunteer to stop for four months before allowing them to come back in smaller groups and spread the team out across the garden. In early March we started to look at opportunities to grow more vegetables across the gardens in an attempt to help support the pensioners on the estate and local food banks. The idea was to utilising the space in the gardens where we would normally create annual displays and grow vegetables in their place. A few weeks later we were tasked with the thought of making this a much bigger offering. On 31 March we lifted the turf from the croquet lawn situated in the East garden and created just under ¼ of an acre of growing space. Eight weeks later we were harvesting our first produce which continued to grow and grow supplying three local food banks, Countess Anne School, and St Audrey’s Care Home.
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Bill keeping an eye on the crops!
The new woodland walks were all finished and ready for the public encouraging our visitor to spend more time in the woodlands rather than on tarmac whilst learning about eight key tree species though new interpretation. We had our first sighting of Oak Processionary Moth a problem which we knew that we would face in the coming years although had hoped would not reach the estate so quickly. The caterpillars present two challenges one the defoliation of our oak trees and the risk which it presents to humans and animals because of its hairy exterior which is shed during its life-cycle and can cause skin irritation. Unfortunately, a pest which we will have to continue to monitor and remove their nests in high traffic areas whilst
