As the shortest day comes and goes and the finish is in sight – the Christmas and New Year holidays are upon us at NGS garden Ferns Lodge. It has been another amazing year.
There has been plenty of hard work, incremental improvements all around, lots of lovely people here, masses of plans for the winter, storms and wet aplenty and of course many moles! Catching them doesn’t seem to work, they seem to like our noisy little solar powered sticks – in fact sometimes if they can’t be bothered to burrow around them, they remove them and dig on! Weekends are spent trying to repair the damage and trying to guess where they will turn up next!
The wonderful rhododendron, which is the centre piece of the top garden, whose gossamer pink flowers and delicate foliage was a joy, is now but a stump – which is a blow. He fell in the last gales and the final stem was removed by Dan, the Tree Man – ‘not viable’ I am told…! The good news is that it is very difficult to kill a rhodo – so we are keeping his sad stump as Dan says that he may well come again… We’ll see.
In the meantime, the new shrubbery to be has 7 tons of spread earth to help it along and the next step is planting, which is the most exciting bit. A shady area but with rhodos, ash and beech already established – in a few years it will be beautiful.
We have also been given both an owl box and a bat box which glower in the Dutch barn – waiting to be found a home far up in the tree canopy. We have many owls and bats so we hope that this additional housing will be used by some young families – owl and bat starter homes!
The bottom meadow is now extended with overhanging branches removed ready for the bush cutter and more earth & grass seed when the time comes.
Masses to do with dividing, mulching, cutting back, bonfires, new planting and even the painting of garden furniture for the new season – which will be with us in a trice.
In addition to our opening on the 28th and 29th May, we have a couple of groups visiting next year – which is very exciting and it does mean that everything MUST BE READY…
Our Christmas roses are a delight and the leaf game is still in full flight as the last of the oaks shed their foliage – the colours are lovely, but Simon is busy with the mower scooping them all up each week. Another funny old Christmas for Planet Earth.
A very Happy Christmas to you all – stay safe and we look forward to showing you all that we have accomplished here in 2022.
Contact sue.grant@fernslodge.co.uk.