Heavy work

This week at Houghton we had some heavy work to do.

We raised the canopies of some of the bigger trees in the garden down towards the river, some Poplar, Fraxinus, Platanus x Hispanica. By removing some of the lower branches, Andrew thought it would enable us to be able to work around the tree better, the visitors to avoid low branches and ultimately the tree will benefit from more energy going into the tree elsewhere. We produced a lot of waste using a pruning saw and loppers and took it in turns to drive the Bradshaw to remove it all onto a fire.

I had a lesson on chemical usage for weed control and tried a Knapsack sprayer for the first time. Heavy to carry and you have to use a stiff pump handle almost all the time which is tiring too. SO good to zap those weeds though in the walled garden, another new task carried out. Lots to learn this week.

I tried a ride on Mower, Artesia which we were trying to pick up leaves with. Quite stiff to manoeuvre but quite speedy to get the job done and I used the Billy Goat to pick up leaves in the orchard, the Kiwi leaves are massive and didn't really want to play ball so good old fashioned raking finished the job off.

A big job to get done was removal of four giant Rhodedendrons (Horizon Monarch) which had become pot bound and that took three people and all their might and Andrew ending up lying down with the force of them!  We re-filled the planters with topsoil and planted four standard Hollies (Ilex J C van tol) instead, which we had sourced from Hillier. I got to visit the wholesale Nursery and that was interesting to see the production of plants on a big scale. Lots I would have loved to take home and lots of plants I had not seen before or at least not identified. I did manage to buy a Skimmia rubella which I want for my front garden and the dark green foliage looks really great against the deep red buds of the flowers to come.

Lots still going on in the garden, the Cornus at the bottom of the main lawn is a bank of red stems and gives a great burst of colour against the river and lawn. The last few leaves of the Liquidambar trees are clinging on giving fire like colour to the view from the Long Border. I love the birds flitting to and fro from the bird feeders in the Walled Garden and we spotted a Woodpecker having a nibble too.