The Countryfile programme featuring Chastleton aired at the beginning of the month with great success. We have had lots of interested visitors to the property and even visitors from the New York Botanical Gardens who were keen to build links with the garden and send volunteers.
A big thanks to the garden tour guides who stepped up and helped out with extra taster tours of the garden when our numbers and demand for tours increased.
The Forecourt has looked beautiful dappled in afternoon autumn sun. We have widened and regravelled the two side paths to The Stableyard and The Best Garden this month.
The Agapanthus aficanus 'Blue Giant' in the ceramic pots at the front steps have finally come out in flower and look glorious. They have been grown for many years in The Forecourt.
The Pinus sylvestris takes a dramatic stance over The Best Garden. We have just finished cutting the Yew hedges in The Best Garden. We mow-in raised grass areas to give a 'ghost' of the large, glamorous herbaceous and rose borders that surrounded the circular Yew hedge in the garden in the Richardsons era in the early 1900s.
The Acer griseum in The Best Garden has amazing, patterned bark and its foliage is just starting to turn scarlet.
The Kitchen Garden has continued to put on a lovely display of flowers, fruit and vegetables. We have worked hard harvesting peaches, apples, pears, raspberries, mulberries, plums, climbing and runner beans, root crops and cutting flowers. The area has had a lovely pink and purple hue with the planting.
Peaches were hand pollinated by John and therefore we have had a good crop and have been harvested and sold to the visitors on the produce stall.
The Sweet Peas and Crysanthemums have flowered well and been picked by the volunteers to decorate the house and sold in small boquets to the public.
Our pumpkin crop - both large and small varieties- has been plentiful and romped across the top end of the Kitchen Garden borders amongst the flowers, squashes and beans.
The green manure - Red Clover - has flowered and created a carpet of pink and green which has attracted bees and other pollinating insects.
The rose border has looked at its best this month and has had lots of fresh blooms. These have been deadheaded by volunteers once they have gone over and this helps perpetuate further flowering.
The croquet lawns have had their autumn weed and feed and look in good condition. We have had the mallets and balls out for the visitors to play on open days in good weather and there has been the regular sound of play on the lawns and merriment from visitors.
Julie, Jane, Roger and I put the new high picker to good use and harvested the apples in the upper branches of the trees around the garden.
Other jobs done in the garden this month are:
-harvesting
-edging
-pruning shrubs and climbers
-planning events for 2013
-mowing
-watering
-ordering spring bulbs
-strimming
-hedge cutting
-weeding
-leaf raking
-topiary
-feeding pots
-planning, sorting and organising Apple Day
-dead heading
-spraying weeds
-catching moles
-managing the wormery
-sweeping steps
-Apple Day.
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