Heating up for the Flower Show!

We’re now getting ready for the RHS Flower Show, which opens in 3 weeks time. In recent weeks we’ve sourced most of the plants for our back-to-back garden, The Mod-ieval Garden. Last week, with the weather being so hot, we have had to move the plants into a shaded area and keep them well watered to try and ‘slow them down’ so they are not past it by the time the show comes round! Because these plants are so important we really need to keep our eye on them for watering and watching out for unwanted pests.

In the glasshouses we have thinned out the vines to allow the grapes to swell – it gives more space for the fruit to see the sun. They’re pea sized at the moment and should be ready to pick later in the summer. The vines are pruned to two leaf buds after where the fruit is beginning to form. That was a hot job – it can be over 100 degrees in the glasshouses, especially around midday!

The last couple of days we’ve been transplanting the wallflowers, which have been grown from seed this year in the kitchen garden. Thousands will be planted over the next few days in the kitchen garden. They’ll then be transplanted for the autumn into the Italian and Charlotte’s Garden. Due to the heat, as soon as we lift the plants, they’re beginning to wilt so we have to be really fast with the planting and watering.

At the moment we’re getting a good crop of potatoes, cauliflowers, lettuce, cabbage, turnip and beetroot. We’ve also had some rhubarb and great strawberries – though we have had to net them to keep the squirrels and birds from the berries. All the produce is sold from the Garden Shop.

All the gardeners are wearing their hats, keeping covered up, slapping on the sunscreen and staying in the shade as much as possible. We’re also praying for rain!

Mark Blomeley

Craftsman Gardener

Images Left: Show plants in the shade. Right: Wallflower seedlings in Kitchen Garden

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

Blooming Borders

This is a very busy time of year for us in the gardens. During the last couple of weeks we have started to change over all the bedding from spring to summer, working on the formal flowerbeds, hanging baskets, tubs and containers.

Since last September we’ve been propagating cuttings from old varieties of Geraniums and Fuschias for the beds and then from February onwards, sowing seeds and potting up plugs. All the greenhouses and cold frames have been
bulging with plants and we are now slowly emptying them out.

We’ve now been able to slow down on the watering, which is very time consuming –it could be three times a day on a hot day. We’ve also now started tidying and cleaning the houses, ready for the next crop – our chilli collection!

We grow about 12 varieties of chilli plants and produce them for the garden shop. One variety I’m looking forward to seeing growing is a slow grower called Bhut Jolokia. This is one of the hottest chillies in the world and measures over one million on the Scovile Scale – which grades ‘heat’ intensity. We tried it last year and immediately reached for the hosepipe!

Now the bedding is nearly done, we’ve started planning for the RHS show in July. We’re doing a ‘Modeival Garden’. We’re already growing and sourcing plants for our garden and the props and materials for it. More to be revealed…

Bob Buckley

Glasshouse and Kitchen Garden Supervisor

Antiques Roadshow Arrives!

The whole team has been busier than one armed bricklayers at the moment getting the garden ready for two very important dates. Thankfully the first passed successfully on 20th May with the arrival of BBC’s Antiques Roadshow.

Four days spent tweaking and tickling the Italian Garden for one day of filming which will be shown in Autumn. I reckon it was good value as it is regularly seen by up to 7 million viewers, after digesting Sunday dinner and hopefully in need of some cheer on a cold wet Autumn night. Also, it has a healthy viewing across the globe and I’m glad to say the team and Mother Nature really shone. The Rhodos looked stunning, set off by beautiful lawns and late spring bedding.
The whole event went very smoothly, a great BBC team and the whole Tatton behind the day – makes you proud to be a part of it.

The other major event was our busiest Bank Holiday weekend for our predominantly spring garden. Getting it as good as possible was, as ever, our priority. I reckon nature has a big hand in it looking so good, but let us never forget that it’s the relationship between gardener and nature which is the real reason for it all looking so good. Why don’t you come and see it for yourself!

Simon Tetlow, Garden Team Leader

Pineapple House Re-Stocked

I’m a member of the glasshouse and Kitchen Garden teams. In the last week, I have been working on re-stocking the pineapple house with 40 new pineapple plants, of the variety ‘British Queen’, which are all already fruiting. The Pinery/Vinery was restored in 2007, to re-introduce pineapple production to Tatton, a traditional feature of the kitchen gardens.

Unfortunately, due to the extreme winter we lost all our previous crop in January and February. We’re hoping we’ll be harvesting some fruit from these new plants by the autumn. This is a good time to crop them because, by then, they will hopefully have reached their full size and will taste at their best.

The plants have been potted up and then plunged into the pineapple pits in the Pinery/Vinery. The bed consists of fermenting oak leaves that provide bottom heat to generate root growth. This is a traditional method – others use ‘tanner’s bark’, but this does generate a lot of heat and can be hard to regulate, whereas oak leaves provide a more uniform heat around the pots.

The idea is to produce good pineapples rather than just growing them. This means, we need to pay attention to watering and ventilation, and ‘damping down’ (sprinkling water across the paths, walls, glass and misting over the top of the pineapples themselves). All three things are important and need to be in balance in order to produce a good fruit. This is something I will be checking on a daily basis during my working days.

John Hoxworth, Craftsman Gardener

A (n)Ice Arrival...

I am a Craftsman Gardener, with responsibility for the Japanese Garden. However, over the last couple of weeks I have been working with the artists installing their artworks for Tatton Park Biennial 2010, which opens on 8 May.

My work has mainly been putting things in place, including helping Jamie Shovlin transport his shed and audio/visual equipment to the corner of Tower Wood and moving the technical equipment and scaffolding for Austin Houldsworth's fossilisation machine. I also transported Jem Finer’s shed and ‘the orb’ – a very fragile globe camera obscura, on the back of the tractor and trailer – every time I hit a bump my heart was in my mouth! I also helped load and unload and transport Fiona Curran’s tree house and pruned some of the lower branches of the Pine tree before they put the tree house into place. I also helped install the small cinema near the Maze, transporting it on the back of the tractor – it was about 3 tonnes in weight, I also needed to go very slowly again!

Last Monday was the most nail-biting experience when the 2 tonne block of glacial ice arrived – this is artist Neville Gabie’s piece. The ice is 10,000 years old and was brought from Greenland, transported by ship, boat and lorry to Tatton. It was then up to me to drive it on the back of the trailer (see picture) down to its position near Golden Brook. This was all whilst the BBC camera crew were filming and I was trying not to shatter it. Again, this was a moment to drive the tractor very carefully! I couldn’t go any faster than slow in very low gear. It then took a very long time, virtually to the end of the day, to try and lift and slide the ice into place. There were about eight pairs of hands trying to fit the ice and the glass surrounding it into the structure. I’ve really enjoyed being involved in the Biennial and am looking forward to seeing everything complete ready for the opening.

For more information about the Biennial visit www.tattonparkbiennial.org

Geoff Horrocks, Craftsman Gardener

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