SRGC Nursery Workshop 4

CHRISTIE'S. THE BIG MOVE, OCT 2005


Ann and I have decided to change direction here at the nursery. We will no longer be open for sales, unless by appointment. Visitors will be welcome but a contact is requested. We will also open for garden visits by specialist groups, including SRGC groups and we will have our RHS event days as usual. Mail Order will continue as before and hopefully we can increase this service to a full, online "click to buy" facility. Several factors have led us in this direction but the main reason is that we are to build two houses on the nursery site; one to our Northern boundary which will be sold and one on the site of our office which will be for our youngest daughter, Denise. This project is where the problems began some months ago, I do not want to go into details but Council planners have been very difficult to please. Thankfully we now have a positive response to our planning application and hope to start building in spring. We now find that we have to move all our glasshouses and two large established island bed
, plus mature trees and myriads of stock plants, this has resulted in the construction of several new garden areas as I have tried to save as many plants, trees and bushes as possible. I intend to give updates as we get through the move, showing success as well as failure.






I now realise this is a huge task but I will do what I can, when I can, so here is part one of The Big Move.
I have demolished Glasshouse no 1, the garden borders along the sides were planted with Hellebores, Rhododendrons and lots of bulbs; these were easily moved by digging round each plant then lifting with a large root-ball of soil. This did take some time and all were very heavy. I also moved all the soil, compost to the new site. Several days part time were spent doing this one area.







I had started to create a new garden some years ago in the lower stock area of the nursery, as we gradually added spare compost this was planted with a backbone of trees, shrubs, Rhododendrons and some choice primulas, meconopsis ; anything unusual we would try in this new area. I placed much of the spare compost from the old beds alongside this new garden; this was to give more room for any plants I wished to find a new home for. So far, so good, but during the move several of the dormant bulbs have ended up without labels and I am sure several surprises will emerge in spring. I also decided that it was time to try something different and, as I had acquired some good stone from Davey Sharp in Elgin, a crevice garden seems like a good idea. I have plenty old concrete blocks which make good edging, so down the west side of my new garden I made a dwarf wall 20to 30 cm high then, around 90 to 120 cm further west, another wall was made, so creating an island bed which was filled up with all the really gritty co
mpost from one of the other island beds.







Some stone has been set at an angle and I will gradually move the more choice plants to this area, more stone will be added when possible.





From another garden area we had outcrops of Tufa rock and some local Marle (both Limestone) so I have begun another raised bed.
The large established Acers have caused much blood sweat and tears to move and I have only moved one so far; I dug a track approx 60 cm away from the trunk thus cutting all the roots, sounds easy but it took all afternoon. Then, with the help of my wee 4 wheel drive Kuboto, I transferred the tree to a new site: only three more to go.





More updates will follow but work has come to a standstill as we now have hard frost.

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