Tatton's Blooming!

This week I’ve been liming the lawn in Charlotte’s Garden and the Italian Garden, ready for scarifying. The soil here is very acid so we use the lime to raise its P.H. to help kill the moss off. This is something we do every year at about this time. We’ll also be giving the lawn a spring feed after we’ve finished the scarifying and I have been spraying the paths with sulphate of iron to kill off the moss.

Continuing with the tidying up I’ve been removing ivy from the walls of the L Border. This is to make it ready for re-introducing the traditional wooden trellis which will support climbing roses, clematis and other plants. We’ve ordered in the timber and will be making it onsite to fit perfectly. Also on the L Border I’ve been digging over the bed and mulching it with horse manure to keep the weeds down and feed the plants.

If you get the chance to come down don’t forget to visit the glasshouses near the Orchard and see the beautiful peach blossom in flower. This will only be around for the next week or so!


Alan Denton, Gardener

Digging Up Spring

This is the time of year when the last of the remaining frosts are on the ground and it’s starting to get a little bit warmer. Around the gardens in Tatton the beginnings of spring are starting to emerge: Forsythia intermedia on the L border is now flowering in golden abundance; the delicate white bell-like flowers of the Pieris japonica on the rockery complements the sky blue Irises surrounding them. The pink flowers of the Rhododendron ‘Christmas Cheer’ are peeping through the buds that have enclosed them all year and the dark pink berry-like flowers of the Skimmia rubella around the corner are flowering profusely.

Unfortunately I am missing all of this as I have been digging in the kitchen garden! I have been working on the herb bed which we plan to re-locate to a small raised bed elsewhere in the garden and replace it with a mixture of perennial flowers, including dahlias. We did not have the opportunity to finish preparing this bed during the early winter period, due to the biggest burden on gardeners – the unfavourable weather conditions!

Digging is a tiresome task but very rewarding as it aerates the soil and allows water to seep through. Many of the visitors to Tatton have complimented us on the condition of the soil in the vegetable garden and we simply say it is due to many years of hard work and feeding it with manure and fish blood and bone. I look forward to filling these bare beds with vegetables and flowers later on in the season.

Daniela Jankowska

The photo shows me rotivating a bed in the kitchen garden during late spring

Stone the Crows!

This year we’ve really excelled ourselves in making our scarecrows! It’s the third year we’ve had a scarecrow festival and we think it’s going to the best!

There will be a record number of scarecrows in the gardens this year ranging from Darth Vader, Bill & Ben, to the Stig – who will be dotted around the gardens for half term week (19-27 Feb, closed Mon). There’s also a fantastic quiz for kids’ to take part in and an activity day on Sat 19 Feb.

The glasshouse and kitchen garden team, volunteers and one of the Education team members have been working solidly on making the scarecrows for the past week or so. We’ve taken over the Conservatory to make them in as there’s loads of space now it’s been cleared out for restoration this spring.

It’s a nice change for us to do something different from the day to day tasks. Hopefully the weather will stay nice and we will have a record number of visitors this year!

As this is something we’ve all done together, we thought we’d jointly share this blog with you!
Mark Blomeley, John Hoxworth, Simon Kellett.

Winter Work in the Garden

I’ve been at Tatton for the past month. Previous to this I worked at Congleton Park for 21 years –so this is a welcome change for me! Before that, I served an apprenticeship at Stoke on Trent parks. I’m enjoying my time here very much!

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been doing some winter clearance of areas in the garden. This has included taking down an old fence, to make way for a new fence in the area called ‘Stallion Paddock’.

In front of the Orangery we’ve felled an oak (which was probably over 150 years old), but has needed taking down for safety reasons. We’ve also pruned back the Rhododendrons near the Maze. This is a typical winter task when the ground conditions allow– because the ground is frozen, it allows you to do these heavy jobs, without damaging the ground too much.

We’ve also been taking the Christmas festive decorations out of the Mansion, as it closed to the public at the weekend. A bit strange, as we’ve not even got to Christmas Eve yet! The greenery will be composted for use in the following season. We’ve also made some wreathes using garden greenery, which have been on sale in the Garden Shop.

All the garden team wish everyone a very happy and snowy Christmas! We look forward to blogging more in the New Year.

Michael Brown, Gardener

The Pumpkin Tree

Over the last couple of days I have been set a rather strange task: to put a dozen large pumpkins into a tree near the maze! This is ready for ‘Get Squashed in the Gardens’ taking place during October half term. Kids will be following a trail which leads them to a Beech tree which has had pumpkins wired onto it. The pumpkin required me and Simon climbing a triple rung ladder and wiring them securely into place – this needed a strong head for heights.

There is also a neighbouring tree which has been dressed with cobwebs, spiders, bats and other spooky stuff ready for Hallowe'en. I climbed up here on a rope and harness to fix them into place. The overall effect is pretty striking and I can imagine the children being impressed with it, when they come in from tomorrow.

The other gardeners have been working hard on putting together a display of pumpkins and squashes in one of the glasshouses. There are hundreds, of various shapes and sizes – it’s nice to see all the produce set out like this.

It’s surprising what tasks you get asked to do at Tatton, but it is great to have a change from time to time!

Preparing for Winter

Back in March you can see from my previous blog, how I created a marrow bed in the kitchen garden, using traditional methods. This year has been an exceptional year for pumpkins and marrows. They had a good start in the sunshine earlier in the year and have been helped by the wet weather later on – which all helps them put on weight.

This photograph shows me with our largest pumpkin and one of the marrows. The pumpkin is from a variety called ‘Hundredweight’ and it takes two of us to lift it!! We’ve got even heavier marrows than the one you can see here. We’ll probably harvest the pumpkin mid October – it’ll be used in a fabulous display during our ‘Get Squashed’ week (Saturday 23rd to Sunday 31st October). We show all the pumpkins, marrows, squashes and gourds – which have been specially grown for showing not eating!

The other photo you can see is me tying up onions, just how it used to be done. The onions were sown in March, planted out end of April/beginning of May; then they were lifted at the beginning of August. They were left to dry out in one of the large polytunnels for a few weeks. This year has been a great year for growing onions here – due to the hot weather at the beginning of the year which meant that they’ve grown quicker earlier on and we lifted them early enough so they didn’t suffer from the wet weather (onions like it to be drier – in case they rot). The varieties of onions in the picture are ‘Bedford Champion’ and ‘Ailsa Craig’. We’ve also grown a red onion called ‘Red Brunswick’ which has also done really well and a showing onion called ‘Mammoth Giant’ which is about 15cm diameter now!

We string them in a traditional way; starting from a strong piece of string/or rope a metre length, then you tie a loop in the bottom with a hangman’s knot then you get three onions together and put the tops of the onions through the loop and pull the knot down. This is the most important part of the process. You then add an onion at a time, working round in a circle, looping the top of the onion round about three times, working your way up until you’ve got as many onions on it as you want. As you can see in my picture, I have about 60 onions, but you don’t need to do that many. It took two of us to lift this bunch (carefully!). The idea of bunching the onions is for the air to flow freely around them so they dry out properly. This is to prevent them from rotting or any disease getting to them. You can then take one off as you need it. These should last you throughout the winter.

Simon Kellett

Craftsman Gardener

The Dark Lady

In May I went over to Horne in Holland to meet students from Clusius College. Over the last 12 years Clusius horticultural students have come over to Tatton every other year to work in the gardens for a fortnight and then build their own garden for the annual RHS Flower Show. In recent years it’s been my responsibility to manage and look after the students and the garden. By the way, the college was named after the first person who took tulips to Holland (Carolus Clusius)!

This year the design of the garden was based on a story from Gawsworth Hall, about the ‘Dark Lady’. Mary Fitton, from the Gawsworth family, is often believed to have been an inspiration for the ‘dark lady’ from Shakespeare’s sonnets.

The students’ back to back garden included a wall for vertical planting, with black and white panels to represent the tudor construction of the hall. In the centre of a decorative pond was a dark red David Austin rose called ‘the dark lady.’ The roses used are now going to be planted in the rose garden at Gawsworth.

The students had a great time when they were here. They got a silver medal for their garden, and enjoyed some great local experiences including walking in Derbyshire, and trips to Liverpool, Manchester and Old Trafford stadium – and of course, time working in Tatton’s gardens. it’s been great fun to host students for another year and we look forward to the next batch in two years’ time!

Pete Lofthouse, Craftsman Gardener