Readers’ gardens
We started the year with a mechanical digger in our garden, the result of a burst water main that runs from the lane under the lawn and borders, up to the house. Unfortunately, it’s 2m (6½ft) below ground level, but thanks to a considerate engineering team with an interest in gardening, the replacement process was relatively painless!
They by-passed a precious conifer Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Filifera Aurea’, then tunnelled under the driveway and garage, digging a minimum of access holes. All achieved with a ‘mole’ driven by air pressure, which was brilliant.
Thanks to the mild weather, we were able to lift and heel-in some border plants – heathers, polyanthus and cyclamen – that lay in the line of fire. Job completed, it only remained to repair peripheral damage and replant everything. In this respect the lawn proved, once again, how resilient turf can be. Track depressions left by the digger were eased with a fork afterwards and are barely noticeable now.
What followed was a great sweetener. Mild weather, days with the temperature around 10C (50F) and lots of positive outdoor work. Blooms of winter jasmine, viburnum, and so-called autumn
cherry are excelling themselves at eye level and above, while snowdrops, polyanthus and Cyclamen coum flower below. We’ve given the Betula jacquemontii its annual prune and saved the branches for pea crop supports. Two 10-year-old apple trees have been dug up with substantial rootballs, laid on tarpaulin sheets and dragged to prepared replanting holes. Perennial roots (stools) of outdoor chrysanthemums are boxed-up, standing on the cold greenhouse bench, and offering stem cuttings already. The first batch of seeds has been sown under cover, bowls of hyacinths are filling the conservatory air with fragrance, while vases of forced daffodils and stems of Prunus subhirtella ‘Autumnalis Rosea’, both in bud, have opened. Birds are crowding outdoor feeding stations, with visits from partridges and pheasants. We’ve even had a heron fishing for newts in the natural pond!