January overview

Well, now that I have reverted to taking the compact digital camera as opposed to the SLR digital camera, I should be able to keep you all supplied with plenty of photos from now on.
As per, here is the view from the potting shed this morning

Not terribly exciting at this time of year I know but hey ho, things should start to perk up in about a month or so, especially if it stays mild. The ground was still very wet and sticky today so it was back to clearing the cotoneaster hedge.

Before

During

After

The original line of the hedge can be seen on the right of the photo. The "new hedge" on the left is where the original (and seriously overgrown) hedge leaned over and touched the ground putting down fresh roots ! The two lines are about 4ft apart. There are quite a few gaps in the original hedge so the new growth shall be dug up and transplanted to help fill the gaps. The green growth on the right of the original hedge is the row of cut material waiting to be burned.

The cutting back of this hedge also revealed two large fallen trees, which I have now logged.

The garden, being so large, it is probably quite difficult for anyone reading this to try and understand whare I am talking about and I will get round to doing a plan at some point this year but in the meantime, I clambered onto the roog of the potting shed today and took a couple of pics so that you can have idea of the scale of the place.

The pic above shows the two long borders (each approx 40m in length and 4m deep). At the far end of this you can just see the summerhouse (beyond which is the fruit bed) and  to the left of this is the old rosebed and to the left of this again is the box archway which is Richard's preserve.

In this photo you can see the corner of the west facing bed, the lower of the two long borders, and some of the middle section of the garden. The lower part of this middle section will be home to the veg patch for this year at least and what is to be done with the remaining sloped area above the veg patch  has yet to be decided. Below this is the greenhouse and another large area of garden - this could quite possibly be turned into a formal orchard area but that is well into the future.

The project for the this year (over and above looking after and maintaining what is already done) is to reclaim that section of the garden beyond the summerhouse and below the fruit bed. This area is enclosed on one side by the beech hedge and on the other by the cotoneaster hedge. The plan is that eventually this will be the veg area of the garden but as you can see from the pic below, it needs a lot of work.

In the greenhouse the various perennials that are in pots are starting to produce fresh growth and all look to have survived, so come the Spring proper, we shoud have quite a few new plants to help fill out the long borders.

The old rosebed has been given a generous application of FYM and will be home to the dahlias

That's all for this week. When the long borders start to take off I think I'll try and take the photos from the roof of the potting shed as opposed to inside the potting shed as you will get a much better idea of what's happeing where. Bye for now