From Thursday, 1 May The Stables restaurant is open every day. For all enquiries please see www.thestableshospitality.com
Every year our grumpy swan builds a nest in exactly the same spot. He is quite protective of it even thought there…
Every week we set a plant ident for our two lovely students so that they can learn the Latin names of the plants as…
On Monday 6th May - the next bank holiday - Kevin & his team are putting on a special lunchtime barbeque. Our…
Excitement is mounting in the glasshouses! The annual flower seeds that we sowed last month are bursting into…
Yesterday's Independent contained a lovely summary of Hestercombe Gardens in it's 'Top 10 Best Gardens To Visit'. We…
Claire's been busy on our website - have you seen the blog section on the menu bar? Regular updates on gardening and…
All our Summer Events are now up on the events section of the website. There's something for everyone - whether it's…
Today we are celebrating Jessica Redheads 21st Birthday!! Personally it was a wake up call to me to realise that not…
As you all know by now we are extremely excited about our new glasshouses. I don't know what it is about them. Maybe…
It has been another cold and frosty week in the garden, so in order to keep warm we began with a little mulching! Using two year old farm manure we mulched around all of the shrubs on the Rhododendron bank of the Shrubbery.There was not enough manure to cover all of the bare patches of soil, so instead we concentrated on surrounding each large shrub with a ring of mulch that is a couple of inches deep. The purpose of mulching is to feed the soil so that more nutrients are available to the plants. It is also good for supressing weeds, protecting the plant roots from frost in winter and for retaining moisture in the soil in summer. In preparation for mulching it is a good idea to clear around the base of the shrubs, for example by removing any weeds. Above: Farm manure is used as a mulch in the Shrubbery. Also this week we continued thinning out the shrubs in the car park areas (as described in the blog entitled 'From frosty mornings to flooding' 21st December 2012) and completed the vine pruning (see blog entitled 'Pruning and collapsed culverts' 11th January 2013). The blockage in the culvert that was causing flooding on the South Walk last week has been cleared and the path has now been re-opened. Looking good and smelling sweet in the gardens this week: Above: Sarcococca hookeriana var. digyna can be found in the Shrubbery next to the tall upright yew. Above: The wintersweet, Chimonanthus praecox is flowering against the walls of the Rotunda.
