Trugg and Barrow’s garden diary December 2012

Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
When Langston Hughes wrote this he clearly didn’t have to go out and work in it or have flood water lapping around his front door or swamping his fields when he needed to be working them. The game keeper and the woodsmen have found it especially difficult to get around the estate this last month, with mud up to their eyeballs.. Yes, it has been another very wet month in the garden but the plaintive tones of Tura Lura Lurral have got us through it.
The garden played host to a craft fair at the end of November and, despite the desperate shortage of parking due to a waterlogged car park, the sun shone and the day went off very well. Thanks to all who came.
The wet weather and extra work due to the craft fair has meant that we are a little bit behind where we would normally be with the season’s jobs. But drier weather and a following wind should help us to catch up before Christmas.
Something to settle down to.
This month has mostly been about getting up the leaves and cutting back the decaying growth of perennials. Although it is good to leave some foliage until Spring as a refuge for insects, birds and mammals, there is something satisfying about being able to impose ‘tidiness’ on a space. It must be something to do with the satisfaction one gets from a ‘job done.’
Yet the Autumn tidy up leaves little to offer the reader or the writer, so with Christmas approaching it seems appropriate to think of a gardener’s wish list and throw in a few recommendations of my own.
High on my list are always books, some old and some new. First amongst them are works by Edward Augustus Bowles; that great plantsman who gardened at Myddleton House. I cannot believe that I have omitted his works from my library but there you are, you can’t have everything! His three volume work following the progress of his garden through the year is widely regarded as a masterpiece. He was also an authority on Crocus and his work ‘Crocus and Colchicum’ will sit nicely on my shelf next to the other three. Janis Ruksans the Latvian bulb expert, has recently written the monograph on Crocus which I think would be worth purchasing in order to update elements of Bowles’ work.
My next must have is another book entitled ‘New Trees’. The eighth and final edition of Bean’s ‘Trees and Shrubs hardy in the British Isles’ has been revised and updated. ‘New Trees’ is in many ways an extension of this monument of gardening literature and, weighing in at three kilos, it is not to be taken lightly although I have found it readable where I have been able to borrow a copy. However, as well as weighty it is also pricy at £90 in some retailers so I will have to hope that Father Christmas is generous and has been receptive to my hints about book tokens!
Finally on my wish list is a more modern work entitled ‘Seeds of Adventure’ by Peter Cox the eminent plant hunter and rhododendron expert. Part travelogue, it is a record of his time botanising in the eastern Himalaya and China. I always choose to read a book of this type along with a more genus specific work. Short of actually going to some of these exotic places, growing the plants that have been brought back by intrepid explorers are the best way of being ‘transported’ from the mundane!
Why not write to us with your own gardening wish list!
In the Kitchen Garden
Due partly to the hectic work schedule and long-term staff sickness some annual jobs in the kitchen garden have gone undone for a couple of years. One of those jobs is the soft fruit bush pruning that should ideally be done at the beginning of winter. As they have not been pruned for a while they have become a bit overgrown and disheveled. I have made a start on trying to renovate them and I will be trying to finish the job in December.
The normal procudure for established bushes is to remove one-quarter to one third of the oldest wood each year. Cut out low-lying and badly placed branches, try to produce an open bush that allows light into the centre. Keep strong, young, upright shoots. Old wood is almost black whilst young wood is light golden brown. Cut as low as practical as this will encourage new vigorous shoots from the base of the bush. Any weak, dead or diseased shoots should be removed to their base.
Old neglected bushes, provided that they are not diseased, can be pruned hard to around 2.5 cm from the ground during Winter. New shoots produced in Spring should be thinned in the following Autumn if they are over crowded.
What I have done is somewhere in between these two options. This is so that I at least get some fruit next year. Each of the bushes has at least produced some new shoots this last year. I have removed half or more of the oldest wood, much of which was layering into the surrounding soil. Dead and diseased wood is also being removed. This action should enable the plants to produce some fruit next year and stimulate new shoots from the base.
Other jobs being done in the kitchen garden are tidying fallen leaves and a bit of winter digging.
Please note: images have been removed from this pages because some of them may have been used without permission.