The Italian Job Well Done!

My last blog was the 1st February, since that time we have completed the Italian Garden parterre and bedded it out – I’m really pleased with the outcome! Since we put the metalwork in place, we fertilised the soil, dug it over and added compost ready for planting. After the dirty soil work had been done we added the red and white gravel, which gave better definition to the beds.

Planting out started at the beginning of June for the summer bedding. All the plants were grown here in Tatton’s greenhouses, including Thrift, red and white Geraniums, Ageratum and Cineraria. It took three of us a day to plant it out .. but now there are plenty of jobs I need to do to keep it looking nice!

I’ve been dead-heading the beds, picking over (removing the dead leaves), mowing the lawns and edging with shears and keeping them well-watered during this dry spell. I’ve also applied a liquid fertiliser to the lawns to help keep the grass looking green.

It’s been great to complete this work and is particularly rewarding to hear all the positive public feedback. There are not many opportunities to work on ‘new’ or to reinstate old features of the garden and it’s been really enjoyable to play a part in this project.

Jamie Jackson, Craftsman Gardener

Late Flowering Season

Over the past few weeks I have also been working on the Italian Terrace parterre (see The Italian Job below!)

This week we have finally finished installing all the metalwork. The blacksmiths, Broadbents, came in for a couple of days to help us weld all the internal pieces into place. This was a really intricate job as each piece had to be welded in separately and then welded on to the next piece.

The next job is to fill the central metal sections with soil and compost ready for planting the Armeria, commonly known as ‘Thrift’. This is a pink flower often found on coastal areas and is also used on the lower Italian Terrace area. The next job will be to put ‘Mipex’ down; this is a sheet which keeps the soil and gravel separate – we’ll be starting this next week, ready for the 10 tonnes of gravel arriving shortly. This means all the hard structure will be ready for Easter and the red Geraniums and white Alyssum etc will then be planted early June. Normally I look after Charlotte’s Garden and the Rose Garden so it’s been great to work in a different area and in this project to reinstate a parterre.

We are unfortunately three weeks late with the bulbs this year, due to the icy and frosty weather. Normally by now we would have quite a lot of daffodils in the garden and none have appeared as yet! Also none of the camellias in Tower Wood (near the Tower Garden) have flowered yet - in the past, some may be half way through flowering by now. Camellias flower one flower on each branch at a time and then when that dies or is frosted, the next bloom will open. As yet, we’ve seen none!

In three weeks time, possibly around Easter if the weather stays nice we should get a real blaze of colour from the early Rhododendrons, daffodils, camellias, the Iris reticulata and Magnolias – so it’s definitely worth planning a visit around that time. (As a taster - here's an illustration from our archives - pics of Camellias in bloom to follow!)



Pete Lofthouse
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