Rebuilding a nursery - Copton Ash

[Tim Ingram]

Our nursery and garden are intimately associated so rebuilding one implies weeding and maintaining the other. This area at the bottom of the garden is devoted to snowdrops and woodlanders and after a good soaking from the recent thunderstorms is getting a top-dressing of garden compost. We have three large insulated compost bins and the one on the right has been emptied into this area, but very rapidly refilled! In a week or so's time this will have dropped to half this height as the temperature of the heap maximises and composting gets into its stride, but we have plenty more to keep filling it up! (I have measured up to 80°C in these heaps when we used to shred and add grass cuttings to it as well, and it stays over 50°C for several weeks, so we can get good compost within 3 or 4 months, and usually pretty weed free). The two right hand bins need emptying too, but barrowing several cubic metres of compost around the garden needs a little time!

The ground under the fruit trees is full of snowdrops and gradually becoming planted up with choice woodlanders and ferns. Initially though we try to keep it free of weeds by mulching with grass cuttings (in the past we used bales of straw from the local farm). The apples this year - which always come too thick and fast - will be crushed and made into fruit juice.

[Tim Ingram]

These pictures show the next row of apples over which is planted up with species such as roscoea, hellebores, many ferns, trilliums, podophyllum, epimediums, arisaemas and hostas. At this time of year their foliage still looks very good even though most flowers have gone over. This is one part of the garden that doesn't dry out too much in the summer so a wider range of such plants are reasonably successful. In winter and spring here is the highlight of the garden. The final picture shows that we are fortunate in our dry summer climate of not getting too much slug damage on hostas (at least for the moment), and also what good flowering plants these are.

[Maggi Young]

Some great foliage mixes there, Tim.   Do you "turn" the compost in the heaps or rely on the heat to do the job?

[Tim Ingram]

I used to turn the compost Maggi but aching limbs have reduced my resolve! It certainly helps in bringing the outer material into the middle and aerating the mix all over again. If I had a small tractor... 

[Maggi Young]

We  never turn ours.  Our heaps are usually around  one cubic metre,  to a max of 1.5 metres cubed - and  we just pile them and leave them. Never had any problem getting the heat up and making lovely compost that way.

We've always wondered if there truly is any real benefit in turning  - some suspicion that it's a hangover idea from the days when gardens had numerous staff who needed to be kept busy....     

[MatthewStuttard]

Maggi, You've got me thinking now.  My wife is the one who usually mentions it's time for me to turn our heap
Matthew

[Maggi Young]

Maggi, You've got me thinking now.  My wife is the one who usually mentions it's time for me to turn our heap
Matthew

 Hmmm......     Let me think........

In which case I am sure that Mrs Studdart must have legitimate concerns that your compost heap is not sufficiently "mixed" in its construction, having too much of one type of component and is thus anerobic and requires turning . 

[Neil]

We  never turn ours.  Our heaps are usually around  one cubic metre,  to a max of 1.5 metres cubed - and  we just pile them and leave them. Never had any problem getting the heat up and making lovely compost that way.

We've always wondered if there truly is any real benefit in turning  - some suspicion that it's a hangover idea from the days when gardens had numerous staff who needed to be kept busy....     

Too much effort to keep turning them.  Anything that doesn't break down in mine just gets thrown back in for another go

[Tim Ingram]

It doesn't take long for waste ground to regenerate quite a diverse array of plants. We used to rent part of the field next door to our garden, which included an old (and pretty tumbledown) but extensive dutch light glasshouse which we re-covered with Visqueen. This area enabled us to grow a wide range of perennials and alpines and also to line out and bud fruit trees in great variety (some of these old varieties grown from budwood from Brogdale near us have ended up at Blair Castle in Scotland). After vacating the glasshouse and land the site was eventually cleared...

[Tim Ingram]

Now some four years later the land carries a good crop of free-seeding weeds, from nettles and ragwort, to teasels and willowherb -  not always so beneficial to our garden but actually especially attractive and varied this summer probably as a consequence of the very mild and wet winter.

[Matt T]

Now some four years later the land carries a good crop of free-seeding weeds, from nettles and ragwort, to teasels and willowherb -  not always so beneficial to our garden but actually especially attractive and varied this summer probably as a consequence of the very mild and wet winter.

And a fantastic resource for all kinds of wildlife that will be living and feeding on those native wildflowers too!

[Tim Ingram]

Thanks Matt - yes you are absolutely right, and in our garden too!

On the other side of the track (this was of great benefit to us before because we could get compost etc. delivered in bulk), and right alongside the M2, a similar field has never been used except as grazing for rabbits and the occasional mowing. This has an even richer mix of plants flowering this summer and steadily a few woody species beginning to establish. One area, in the middle of the field - presumably where the rabbits spend most of their time - has only low plants and a wonderful crop of pink centuary, setting seed now but with a few flowering plants still scattered about.

[Tim Ingram]

In other places denser mixes of ragwort, evening primrose, teasel, vicia, hypericum and seeding hemlock make quite a colourful show. I could imagine a tidy person putting these fields down to grass and grazing horses on them (we have quite a few around us already nearby), but it is rather nice and unusual that these areas have been left alone.

[Tim Ingram]

This may seem hardly a part of 'rebuilding a nursery' but the way this land is regenerating a natural flora year by year, and the diversity of plants is not so different to the fascination of developing and managing the garden and watching how certain species self-seed and intermix. The excitement of the garden is just a great deal more cosmopolitan! We could do with a little less of the seed from nettles and thistles, but in any event a large part of gardening is weeding. What is pleasant is the steady prospect of wilderness reappearing - and relatively quickly too - between us and the nearby motorway, even if it is on the smallest of scales.

[Tim Ingram]

Progress is steadily being made on the nursery itself - cuttings taken and seed sown, the nursery frames filling with plants. Trilliums in the garden now look a little tatty but some have good promise of seed, which is as stimulating to the nurseryman as the garden is to the gardener. Our twenty-five-year-old cedar dutch light greenhouse, which has had problems with the footings rotting, is now half repaired and given a new lick of wood preservative. Taking the glass out has had quite a benefit in this hot summer but encouraged the dog to chase mice amongst the pots, hence the netting!