Happy New Year!

Hope this post finds you well and rested, and ready for the year ahead. I like this part of the year, with Nature just pausing before the springs begins in earnest. It’s a time for planning at Betley Court Gardens. A post-prandial stroll around the gardens in winter allow us to size up jobs for the next year. The trees are bare, and the borders dormant. Large arboricultural tasks reveal themselves after the leaves fall in the autumn. There is a straggly cherry tree on the steep bank of the Dingle that has lost its tenuous grasp on the sandy soil and toppled into Tanhouse Brook. There are a few casualties of last year’s drought and the odd ‘staghorn’ branch that will require the attention of a tree surgeon. Rhododendron and holly shrubs have become top-heavy in places, a response to growing awkwardly under the canopy of grander trees, and now shroud the path. They will need cutting back, or where they impinge on headroom, marked with ribbon, to alert strollers to low lying branches.

Elsewhere, on the south lawn, there is much repair work to be done to grass margins scorched during the ten weeks we had no rain – a very unusual occurrence here on the edge of the Cheshire Plane. If this mild weather keeps up, I’ll be able to sow fine grass seed mixture and hopefully start the process of repair. Another problem we had were rabbits and/or squirrels tearing the edges of the borders to pieces, presumably in a desperate search for moisture. Sadly, we lost half a dozen or so newly planted box plants. Easily replaced though, with spares I have in reserve. In fact, I think we did well to keep as much of the new planting alive as we did last summer.

Another job I’d like to get underway is to start investigating the practicality of restoring William Barron’s topiary yew screen.  Now, it doesn’t look like a topiary screen at present, it is more accurately described as an overgrown cluster of yews, planted too close to the house and blocking out a good deal of the sun from my brother-in-law’s bedroom. Restoration would be quite an undertaking given the age and degree of pruning required, but we have gained advice from the arboricultural manager at The Botanical Gardens at Kew, no less, and we have an action plan. Step one requires ‘lifting it’s skirts’ (pruning the grass level branches) and pampering our ancient tree feature with plenty of mulch around the roots, to get it in the best possible condition. Restoration will be a long haul, we’re looking at five or six years, not including the time required to secure any permissions required from the local authority.

Lastly, a fun task. We visited Manchester Christmas Market on the 19^th December and could not resist the tempting offers from the Dutch bulb sellers, keen to offload their stock before they returned to their bulb fields in Holland. £5 bought a carrier bag and you could stuff it with as many packets of bulbs as humanly possible. At £5, we thought the gamble was worth it. Now, I just need to find time to plant them up, and fingers crossed, I’ll have something to show later in the year!

Best wishes

Ladybird Su