Snow, ice, rain, sleet, sun, it's spring apparently

Grasses add texture, movement and colour through the year with their foliage, flowers and seed heads. They are especially useful in autumn and winter where their flower stems look great in the winter sun or adorned with a dusting of frost. Many are evergreen, again adding interest right through the year.

We have a great selection of grasses available including evergreens, tall ones, short ones, over 12 varieties of Molinia, grasses for sun, for shade, wet soil and dry soil. You can see them growing in the nursery gardens and read about all the varieties we have on our website by following the link below:

http://www.quercusgardenplants.co.uk/grasses.html

On Thursday I had Maisie with me at the nursery.........  I'd like to say helper but........She enjoyed being in the polytunnel with me for the first hour of the day. Sniffing, standing on plants, trotting up and down the poly tunnel.......hmmmmm. Middle son Jamie, Natasha, Cheryl and Lee visited the nursery to say hello. It was bitterly cold again and not ideal for wandering around the nursery, roll on spring and summer. They all came for dinner in the evening and it was great to have a good catch up and in the warm, lol.

Where she shouldn't be!

Brrrrrrr, Friday was a cold one. The wind from the north really brought the temperature down. I don't often feel the cold but I was feeling it. Isobel did a grand job of weeding and tidying the large poly tunnel and I took down a lot of barrows of our own compost to top up some areas of the woodland garden, its getting there. The compost will help improve the soil and also raises the levels to where they need to be. The new plants will love getting their roots down into it over the coming months. A great, warm job for an icy cold day. Can't wait until you can all have a walk round it.

Snow on Friday

Pretty flowers in the snow - Cyclamen coum

Iris 'Katherine Hodgkin' 

Winter aconites

Well that was another snowy cold day on Friday With a plant nursery there is always plenty to do even on days like this. Isabel moved into our other tunnel and started tidying the plants in there, its looking fabulously tidy I was busy doing the never ending admin and clearing an area behind the office that will be dedicated to customer orders. Having a space where we can store orders until they are collected will make such a difference to managing plants and the space behind the office and David can get his work bench back

Other tasks you can do if you've a greenhouse, poly tunnel or covered area is to start sowing seeds. I've sown my annuals and Fiona started sowing perennial seeds last week. Here in the nursery we use peat free Melcourt compost which we use for everything. I have had a very high success rate with this compost for everything including seeds. You can sieve out the biggest pieces of compost if you wish, I don't bother.

It is available to buy from us in 50L bags, £10.95 a bag. We've plenty in stock, so if you are feeling frustrated this weekend that you cant get out in the garden get seed sowing.

We're open Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm.

See you soon

Perennial seeds sown

Annual seeds germinating

What a difference in a day, Saturday morning there was snow and ice, then thawing to nothing by mid afternoon. I made the most of the freezing conditions to get the last of the compost on to the Woodland garden borders and planting in some more plants. Exciting. Fiona sorted out all the roses, pruning them and getting them ready to go out to the sales area, then sowing more perennial seeds, there are so many, I swore and promised I would buy less this year, honest.

Ice on the polytunnel

Compost on the woodland garden

I've been wanting to try willow spiling on the eroding banks in our stream garden for a while now. This winter there was even more erosion so today was the day. This is all experimental but it was fun to try some thing new and try a technique that is traditional and uses natural materials. Wellies on, post knocked in (not easy on a stony stream bed!) I used the left over willow from weaving our fedge in January. Now I just need to back fill with soil

Now that the Snowdrops are beginning to fade and finish flowering this is the time to lift and divide them. Commonly referred to as 'in the green' at this point, they will easily move and be rooted by next year. I will be dividing up some of the clumps growing in the natives garden, which have been there for several years now. Over the past month or so when the Snowdrops have been flowering I have been planning that I will move some of them to the new woodland garden in the natural woodland side. I am also going to plant some primrose there on the banks, hopefully they will take and grow. 

Cherry blossom in the park

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