RHS Round Up!

The RHS show was soon in full swing after a glorious spell of sunny weather, and Tatton’s garden team were in high spirits having been awarded a Silver Gilt for their entry ‘A flight of Fancy’.

Linking in with the Tatton Park Arts Biennial 2012, the imaginative concept behind the garden design is that the last Baron Egerton, who collected plants and garden styles from many continents, including the famous Japanese Garden, sent plant material to other countries, including pea and bean cultivators to his estate in Kenya. Combining  his passion for plants with his interests in exploration, early radio cars, and was a pioneer aviator it helped launch our concept for the 1930’s style rocket, landing on a desolate planet where 1000’s of seeds spill out onto the baron land and flourished into a mass of colour.

What went into the show...

The build took 2 weeks from start to finish, and much of the garden’s features were grown or recycled from Tatton’s own gardens including 3-4 tonnes of the rocks and boulders that make up the Moongate!

Since we started growing the plant species in early May we have nurtured them daily to ensure they are at their best for the show.

We have lots of varieties of plants and vegetables in the garden this year ...see if you can spot them! They include pineapple plants from Tatton’s very own Pineapple house! We also have bananas, cannas, runner beans and cucumbers – all from our conservatory, and palms from our fernery...

...We even have a small rock pool which represents life on the flourishing side of the garden.

Simon (far right) with Head gardener Simon Tetlow (centre) and Bob Buckley (far left)

By Simon Kellet, Garden Team member

If you visited the show this year we would love to hear your comments about your personal show highlights and your thoughts on Cheshire East’s exhibit by the Tatton Garden team.  Leave us your comments below!

For more info on Tatton Parks garden click here.

Marvellous Marrows!

I’m a Craftsman Gardener who’s been working at Tatton since I left school in 1991. I now work in the kitchen garden and the glasshouses - my main responsibilities are looking after the Fernery, the Showhouse Conservatory and one of the four large beds in the Kitchen Garden.

This week I’ve been working in creating a marrow bed on one of my squares in the kitchen garden. Working with Mark, Daniella, Chris and Bob we’ve prepared a bed just how it used to be done in the olden days. Firstly we’ve dug out a two metre wide trench running the full length of the bed. It’s been dug out two spades deep and the soil has been mounded up on both sides. We’ve then rotivated the bottom of the bed and it will eventually be filled completely with well rotted horse muck. Then the soil piled up on the edges will be turned back on top of the muck to create a ‘raised bed’ approximately three feet high. The whole bed will then be planted up with between 12 and 14 plants of the marrow variety ‘Long, Green Trailing’. These plants are being raised in one of the greenhouses and will be ready to plant out after the threat of frost has disappeared, within the next 3-4 weeks.

Once they have been planted out we will leave the hose pipe running on the bed to soak it right through for 2-3 hours. These will need looking after on a daily basis to check the soil is sufficiently moist. These old–fashioned marrow beds could actually be used as pumpkin beds as they also like lots of horse manure. My aim is to grow a really big pumpkin this year and I’m sourcing the seed from America at the moment. We’re currently growing ‘Atlantic Giant’ and ‘Hundredweight’. These will be grown on a smaller scale than the marrow bed.

Last week I also started preparing the ground for planting peas. I dug a trench a foot wide and deep, filled it with muck and back filled it, then covered the trench with cloches to warm the soil up for a few days, ready for planting next week. We will be planting ‘Early Onwards’ ready for cropping in June.

Simon Kellett
Craftsman Gardener