Gardener's Diary - April 2008
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The next few months are the busiest in the garden, the warm weather bringing an explosion of weeds & rapid growth on the lawns, as soon as the weather permits all the formal grass around the house is given a weed/feed/mosskill treatment. Work has started in the huge double herbaceous borders, at this time of year it is mainly weeding (which takes several days), planting & cutting back some of the more prolific plants to stop them swamping their neighbours.
In the kitchen garden all of last years late sown crops (Broad Beans, Garlic etc) are looking well, a new Asparagus bed constructed from old railway sleepers will be finished this month, the old beds were producing very few spears & have been removed as part of the redesign.
The various restoration projects in the garden are going well, the damaged section of flint wall along the top of the moat has had to be completely demolished and will be put back up, the Urn is now finished and looks like new, Shylocks plinth has been reseated, this has been done mainly to level it and remove some old unslightly concrete, once finshed a new bed will be planted around the base.
Nature Notes. The first Cuckoo was heard on April 16th, our Swallows which nest in the stables returned a few days later, elsewhere on the estate several Wheatears have been seen. The warmer weather at the end of the month also saw many more Butterflies, Brimstones and smaller Orange-Tips are usually the first to appear in numbers.
For the first time in several years a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker has been calling & drumming in the park behind the garden, they used to be regular visitors to the Sycamores around the moat in early spring but are becoming scarce, this is often the only time they are seen or heard, even when making a lot of noise being not much bigger than a Sparrow & very elusive they can be difficult to find.
Most of last years Barn Owl nest sites near the gardens are now occupied by Jackdaws but at least one pair is still known to be in one of the boxes on the estate, several new boxes have recently been put up and we hope the second pair which nested for the first time next year may still be in the area. The warmer evenings also saw in increase in the number of bats around the gardens, in the last survey carried out in summer 2006 of the 17 species found in the UK 8 were detected using echolocation equipment, a ninth was thought to be present but not confirmed.
The photos below include a Common Frog, Snakes-Head Fritillary, Pelargonium "Ardens" & the April Snow.
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