Rebuilding a nursery - Copton Ash

[Tim Ingram]

For us it provides the opportunity to show people the plants we grow. Despite the fact that we have gardened and opened our garden for charity for over 30 years, few people know about what we do or realise the great diversity of plants that can be grown in our gardens - and it seems we have to go to the town, rather than expecting the town to come to us.

The snowdrop display looked very good and did attract a lot of attention, even from all those people who just regard them as little white winter flowers often found carpeting woodlands and churchyards. There is probably no great likelyhood that we will convince many people to want to grow the more specialised woodland plants and alpines that have captivated me all of my life, but some of the more interesting ones will, and the 'Best of Faversham' certainly includes many of these.

[Maggi Young]

I must beg to differ, Tim - there is clearly an evangelical campaign afoot there to display the best of Faversham and teach the locals about what wonder lie on their own doorstep.
It's working on me and I'm hundreds of miles away!

[Tim Ingram]

It's nice of you to say so Maggi - but what we really want to do is to encourage people to come and buy plants from us and share in the garden. I suppose 'evangelical' means converting people, but we are trying to simply show them something that is all around us, all the time (actually that's is just what you say!).

[Tim Ingram]

The great clear up continues! It's a good thing the snowdrops are there to cheer us up and it just shows the difference between gardening and exhibiting plants. Garden visitors need to be a little more tolerant than Show judges when it comes their critique. There is the great prospect of replanting these areas once cleared of nettles, and at the moment there are already many plants of the deep pink umbel Pimpinella major 'Rosea', which actually make quite a feature of this area in the summer, despite the weeds.

This part of the garden has a few really interesting plants such as an old specimen of Chordospartium stevensonii which came from the great Graham Hutchins of County Park Nursery and a seed raised Cunninghamia lanceolata, which has grown only a couple of metres high in over 20 years. The beckoning plant of Daphne bholua - the hardiest form, 'Gurkha' (we lost all  the others in the last two winters) - provides incentive to clear this area in particular; and beneath it is a fine clump of Epimedium wushanense, so a lot to look forward to.

[Tim Ingram]

To give a little balance here are some of the snowdrops, very nearly reaching their peak in flowering and just waiting for the sun's warmth to open their flowers fully.

[Matt T]

How exciting to have such a great planting opportunity Tim, and to reveal those special plants that are already there!

Lovely to see the snowdrops looking so well down there. I have just one small clump of snowdrops, which are kept in a pot because they are the family 'drop rescued from my late grandmother's garden and for which I am now the sole custodian  They are only just starting to push noses above the ground now. Glad to see that spring is not too far away for some of us at least.

[Tim Ingram]

Many thanks Matt! The trouble with gardening down in the south-east is that you have to keep up with the Jones'! The snowdrops have been increasing steadily for about fifteen years or more and at last are really making a feature in the garden. I would love to visit the Northern (or even Western! All the same from here) Isles sometime; a quieter more sensible place.

[Matt T]

I spent most of my life in Essex and Hampshire, before moving to Scotland and then the Western Isles. I'd certainly say that life out here is quieter perhaps, but I'm not sure that it is any more sensible! 

[Tim Ingram]

I haven't got used to using the smiley faces (!) but quieter and more sensible are reasonably synonymous I think!

[Tim Ingram]

A few more plants flowering at the moment. The last picture is of Helleborus 'Pamina', a chance seedling that arose from Elizabeth Strangman's breeding programme for primrose hellebores in the 1980's (see 'A Gardener's Guide to Growing Hellebores' by Graham Rice and Elizabeth Strangman). The photo doesn't really do it justice and it is a lovely shade of pinkish-apricot, with faint red-speckling at the base of each tepal inside, and green nectaries. Keeping named varieties like this in cultivation is always going to be problematical, but a few like this and Helen Ballard's famous 'Ballard's Black', keep that connection going with these wonderful gardeners that stimulated so much of the fashion for hellebores that we see today.

[Tim Ingram]

One huge trunk of the eucalyptus blown down at Christmas has remained standing, looming at a 45° angle over the apple trees. At our garden opening a few days ago possibly 90 people walked beneath it(!) and in fact it was very secure, having not moved an iota in the subsequent winds. But how to get it down? Fortunately one of our neighbours is an engineer who has worked in India and the Far East, is very practical, and has a good chainsaw! Rather than taking the tree down slowly from the top (which would have meant climbing it a bit precariously) he persuaded me that we (or actually he) should fell it from a stepladder about 8 or 9 feet up. The idea was to cut 'gently' through with the chain saw until the tree just started to fall, and then stand well back. It worked well and only fell on top of a couple of the orchard trees, making very little damage. I am not sure I would have dared do this on my own and a tree of this size coming down is pretty dramatic. It would have been good to get a time lapse sequence as it fell, but Gillian wasn't quick enough with the camera - so these are just clearing up operations. It's going to take a while to dig it out!! We now have a week or two of shredding and cutting up firewood in between pricking out seedlings and visiting the alpine shows... Hopefully the coming year might prove a little calmer than the last.

[zvone]

 Hi Tim!

Beautifully, that everything ended so well. Still forward successfully.

Best Regards! zvone

http://zvonem.blogspot.si/

[Tim Ingram]

Thanks Zvone! Good to see your pictures in the mountains to give us inspiration amongst the much lower hills of Kent. There will be more to come as spring gets going and the nursery begins to fill with plants.

[zvone]

Thank's Tim!


Also I monitor your walk happily to mountains and beautiful photographs of nature.

Best Regards!  zvone

[David Lyttle]

Tim ,
I have been following your blog with some interest. I too have a large garden to look after and it tends to get a bit unkempt at times. Right mine needs about a weeks serious work with a chainsaw. Your combination of deciduous trees with bulbs and perennials  in the same bed seems very successful. I am finding that evergreen trees (NZ natives) and shrubs (Rhododendrons and Camellias) is not the best for underplanting with woodland plants (trilliums) and bulbs as it tends to get too shaded and dry. A more open structure such as you have judging by your pictures seems to work better.

Eucalyptus makes good firewood and should be planted only with that end in mind!

best wishes ,

David