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January – powering through

katyelton8

As the year's least lovable month finally drags itself to a close, we disprove the common myth of it being a time when you'll find gardeners in the shed with their feet up. Whilst this may be true in the average back garden (and rightly so!), when it comes to a garden of this scale, there's not a moment to lose in preparing for the growing season ahead.


Our main task for the month has been pruning the roses, fruit trees, and shrubs:


Rosa 'Madame Alfred Carrière', pruned and trained in a looping fashion for maximum coverage and flowering. Spot the icicles...
Rosa 'Madame Alfred Carrière', pruned and trained in a looping fashion for maximum coverage and flowering. Spot the icicles...
Rosa 'Wedding Day' trained up and over the pergola, while also being encouraged to meander over the thatched roof of the privy.
Rosa 'Wedding Day' trained up and over the pergola, while also being encouraged to meander over the thatched roof of the privy.
Another rose, this time pegged down in spider-like form. This traditional Victorian method is a way of getting maximum flowering from those shrub roses which send out long, gangly shoots. Trained in this way they produce flowering stems along the length of each shoot, rather than at just the tip.
Another rose, this time pegged down in spider-like form. This traditional Victorian method is a way of getting maximum flowering from those shrub roses which send out long, gangly shoots. Trained in this way they produce flowering stems along the length of each shoot, rather than at just the tip.
Pruning one of the seventeen apple trees in the Orchard Meadow. Even with a team of two, this painstaking task takes well over a week to complete.
Pruning one of the seventeen apple trees in the Orchard Meadow. Even with a team of two, this painstaking task takes well over a week to complete.

The aim is for the pruning to be completed by the end of January, so that February and March can be spent cutting back perennials and giving the beds a mulch (such a breezy little phrase for such an enormous task...!). Ideally the whole lot should be finished before the garden comes back to life, meaning we have a fairly tight window to work in – especially if spring comes early, as it did last year.


As well as pruning, this month also saw us undertake a day's scything with help from a local expert. The technique was trialled in the meadow at the end of last summer, with such pleasing results we plan to invest in our own equipment and use it as our meadow management approach from now on (watch out Poldark). The band of vegetation around the pond was the 'last meadow standing', left intact until this month for its heroic leaf-intercepting qualities. We've learned the hard way that cutting this back any earlier means leaves falling from the surrounding trees seem almost magnetically drawn to the pond. (Bad news for water quality, in case you were wondering).


The pond looking shorn and exposed after its annual haircut.
The pond looking shorn and exposed after its annual haircut.

If this month's photos appear a little on the brown, drab side, they sum up perfectly the kind of January it's been. We'll leave you with the one reprieve from the gloom which came a week or so into the month (now a distant memory), when a fairly decent dusting of snow was frozen in suspended animation for a few days. It seems this fleeting glimpse of winter beauty shall have to be enough to keep us going for now! Let's hope February has a few more more spirit-lifting moments in store.








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