Super Scarecrows

The past fortnight has been really busy with preparing the scarecrows for our annual half term Scarecrow Festival. It’s very much a team effort for mainly the glasshouse staff (as there’s still plenty to do in the grounds for the other staff, still working hard on the Italian Terrace parterre). It’s been great fun thinking up characters and a welcome change to the day to day jobs. My normal responsibility is looking after the large collection of orchids in the Orchid House and working in the veg garden and orchard. Thankfully the snow and bad weather has given us plenty time to concentrate on the scarecrows. Look out for the tiger in the Fernery and the jester at Garden Entrance (those are mine).

Lots of other jobs this last week or so, one of which has been working in the Vinery. We’ve scraped all the bark off the vines with a cutting knife as the barks harbours mealybugs and other unwanted pests. After the bark’s been scraped off the vines are blasted with a jet wash. This is a time-consuming job but well worth it – it really helps the vines to thrive.

I’ve also been mucking the borders in the orchard and the raspberry beds. This has been sourced from a local farmer, as our farm horses don’t produce enough for our needs! Putting the muck downs adds feed to the soil and helps keep the weeds down – and looks nice too!

I’ve also been sowing seed in trays in the greenhouse: cabbage, cauliflower and sweet pea. Geraniums have been potted on, put into bigger pots ready to be planted out for the summer. The variety we’re using is ‘Caroline Schmidt’, an old nineteenth century German variety which is planted at Tatton every year, using cuttings from last year’s plants.

Another job this past week has been chitting potatoes – about eight different varieties. These are put in the onion loft in the dark until ready to plant out in the veg garden. This morning we’ve also been pricking out Schizanthus (Poor Man’s Orchid) for the Show House, the glass house next to the Fernery.

Mark Blomeley
Craftsman Gardener

The Italian Job

Since Christmas myself, Alan and Pete have been working on reinstating a feature of the Italian Garden, which is the usual area I’m responsible for. We’re working on reintroducing a parterre situated to the left of the Mansion (looking up from the Italian Terrace). The parterre was turfed over, we believe, some time around World War Two – due to reduced staffing levels.

Although the Italian Garden was restored in 1982 this area was not completed due to a lack of funds. This project has now been funded by the National Trust raffle – thanks to visitors for purchasing these! In December we started work on marking out the site, although work had to be halted for a short period due to the snow. We’ve started again after Christmas and are making great progress.

After measuring out the 20m X 10m bed we started to lift the turf (this will be re-used in other projects). We then dug down to about 12cm depth – excavating over 20 tonnes of soil in the process. This was dug out by hand and then moved by tractor and trailer, where it will be re-used somewhere else in the gardens.

When we excavated the area we found some of the original pre-1945 red and white gravel. This was fantastic as it confirmed what we thought the colours of the original gravel were – as we were only going from black and white photos and could see they were a contrasting colour. We think that the original colour scheme included blue plants so the bed would have a patriotic theme (which would have been perfectly viewed from Lord Egerton’s apartments).

Also this week we’ve started to fix the metalwork in place which holds in the edges and gives definition to the shape of the bed. The metalwork has been made locally by Broadbents of Mobberley. We can now really start to visualise what it will look like. We hope to have finished this by high season at the end of March. Watch this space!

Jamie Jackson
Craftsman Gardener