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| smoking hot! Monarda Gardenview Scarlet |
If you want to stay fresh go back to school. Others called continuous professional development, I call it dusting of the cobwebs and re-energising. I've just spent a most glorious morning at Wisley Gardens on the Summer pruning of fruit bushes and trees course. Though the day didn't start too well.
I dropped the girls off at nursery and drove away with a skip in my step. Half way to Basingstoke I realised that I had left my purse in Holly's bag! It had my ticket and RHS membership card in it so I couldn't even get into the gardens without it. So I high tailed it back to nursery, snuck in so that neither of the girls saw me and zoomed off again. Luckily I'd given myself 2 hours to get there and nipped into a parks space just in time to join the group by the gooseberries.
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| Cordoned red currants, something to aspire to! |
It was the hottest day in July and I had no hat, but really didn't care. Now my garden is still a mess, I know and accept that, but these gardens fill me with awe and put me to shame, they are beautiful.
The gardener who was leading the course was lovely, Becky Bevan, she made it all sound so simple (and it mostly is, with some complicated bits just to confuse). We started at gooseberries and red currants (these are pruned in the same way) then on to black currants followed by hybrids such as Logan berries. We moved on to trained apples and pears, a particular interest to me since I have 3 overgrown espalier apples trees in my garden. We finished with trained stone fruit trees; cherries, apricots, plums. These are the most complicated to prune, but still Becky explained it with clarity and patience.
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| stepped apple trees, great for small places |
At the end I wanted to zoom back to start pruning my red currants, but was waylaid by the stunning riot of colour in the long herbaceous borders. I was so glad that I had my note book with me and was frantically scribbling down planting combinations while wishing my garden was SO much bigger that I could fit it all in.
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| Giant Echinops, (the blue globes) towering over the other plants |
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| Phlox Blue Paradise, beautiful plants and great fragrance |
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| Agapanthus Midnight Blue, such a rich clour |
Hunger finally dragged me home and after a quick bit to eat I sharpened my secuaters and dived in to the currants. A couple if hours later I'd cut out about half of the branches of the bushes and it looked so my lighter!
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| wild red currant bushes |
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| after pruning, so much lighter! |
While pruning I'd also found some branches that had naturally layered themselves. This is when low branched get covered with soil and send out roots creating a new plant.
I dug these up with a few rogue raspberry canes and took them over to Holly and Lottie's nursery for their little garden. holly was delighted that mommy was at nursery for the afternoon, especially as she was practicing for sports day.
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| do they do the obstacle course in the olympics |
I am very proud to end this blog with a non gardening note. On the eve of the Olympic opening ceremony Holly won the obstacle race at nursery.
