The Duchess purchases numerous garden periodicals every month. She spends her days marking them with a red pen, highlighting a plant she feels the garden needs or a task that simply must be done poste-haste. She then leaves them in a neat pile in the boot-room for me to collect.
The magazines inevitably leave me feeling guilty, wondering how on earth I am supposed to compete with the perfection of the gardens illustrated. The ‘what to do this month’ articles are always helpful reminders of what needs to be done. Since I don’t receive the magazines until the end of the month, that means that many jobs are done one month later than elsewhere but the garden survives never-the-less.
A parcel of bare-root roses has arrived. I have bought many roses from Peter Beales over the years and they have always arrived in first-class condition and this time was no exception. The ground has already been prepared beforehand to allow the soil level to settle down. The sacred law of roses is to plant them with the union – where the branches leave the root stock – below the ground to protect this vulnerable area from frost.
I have planted five roses – including my favourite Empereur du Maroc – in a quarter-circle around a plum-leaved ‘Prunus pissardii nigra’ I will hopefully show photographs later. The last task is to prune them down to buds roughly six inches above soil-level to encourage low shoots to grow and keep the rose compact rather than leggy.
A dead branch on the old sweet chestnut has caught the attention of a great spotted woodpecker. I wish I had binoculars or a camera with a long lens but alas I have neither on me. I can see the woodpecker though, his head rattling away like a pneumatic drill. It does rather remind me – and I share this with slight embarrassment – of my adolescent youth spent head-banging to rock music with my long locks flailing in the air. This was all rather good fun at the time. We probably caused irreversible neurological damage to ourselves, but one is eternal when one is young.
I still have a couple of trees left to plant. I cannot stress the need to get the soil gently placed within the arches of the roots so that the roots are in contact with the soil rather than left in air-pockets. And then before piling the soil back in and stomping down I like to step back and see if the tree is upright. To be honest the trees from the nursery will never be perfectly straight. They have been grown outside in the elements rather than in a test-tube. Compromises will have to be made. But by looking from all four corners one can put the tree as straight as possible and then replace the soil.
Whilst planting the trees I have forgotten a tool and have to traipse all the way back to the stables to get it. Upon arriving at the tool-shed I realise that I have not the slightest notion of which tool I have forgotten. I stand there for a good few minutes like a sad fool. Shaking my head I return to the other side of the garden where I am planting the trees. And then I remember that I needed a knife to cut the twine that holds the tree branches together. I make my way back to the stables again. It is not easy being a gardener sometimes.
hazel tree 