Tulips, Moles and Fart Onions

Tulips around the sundial

A couple of nice achievements this week in the gardens of Betley Court. Back in January I mentioned that Nigel and I had made a bargain purchase at the Christmas Market in Manchester – a carrier bag stuffed with flower bulbs from a Dutch flowerstall, all for a fiver! I planted them up and kept my fingers crossed, and low and behold, we are enjoying a lovely succession of crocuses, tulips and daffodils.

Tukip 'Flaming Falg'

Later in the season, we have some other varieties to enjoy, a selection of alliums (the garlic and onion family). In addition to bearing gorgeous flowers, they are part of a horticultural experiment I’m trying – a method of repelling moles from the flowerbeds. Over the years, our handymen have collected all the autumn leaves (approximately 4 tonnes in total) and piled them, allowing them to break down into leaf-mould over the winter.  The resultant soil-improver is spread over the beds as a mulch to supress weeds, and it definitely improves our thin, sandy soil. In turn this has improved the insect and bacterial life in the soil. All beneficial to our flowers. However, we have been victims of our own success. The increased insect life in the soil has acted as a magnet to the local mole population, who tunnel in to dine on our juicy worm population. Result: mole mountains all over our flowerbeds.

Daffodil 'Cassata'

Our family’s resident zoologist has suggested that moles, who have super-sensitive noses for smelling out bug life underground are not very keen on the pong of garlic and onions. So, the plan is to plant lots of ornamental garlics and onions to keep the velvet-skinned tunnellers away from the flowerbeds. My favourite of these is a gorgeous huge star-flowered purple allium ‘Purple Sensation’, that goes by the Latin binomial Allium aflatunense – or in plain old English the ‘fart onion’!

Elsewhere in the garden, the two Mr O’s have been working wonders, and smart new well-defined paths have been marked out, cleared of overgrowth and bordered with steel edging. Huge dumpy bags of hardcore and Staffordshire pink gravel arrived earlier in the week, and it is the two Mr O’s mammoth task to use these to first level the paths, then cover and restore their appearance with the Staffordshire pink gravel. It will be glorious to see the pathways restored to their pristine Edwardian elegance.

Over the weekend, Nigel press-ganged the Australian wing of the family (over for a sight-seeing visit – or so they thought!!) into clearing the fallen cherry tree from Tanhouse Brook. With two of the Professor’s sons, three grandchildren, and a partner in the gang, they made impressive short work of clearing the stream’s obstruction. They even had time to cut back a huge section of over-hanging rhododendrons, which will reduce the head-ducking required to make it down to the lake. It was so heartening to see the next generation of the family put their backs into contributing towards the maintenance of the gardens. Bravo!

Finally, on Sunday, we had a group of 25 people visiting the gardens. We were amazed at how many of them had heard Nigel on the radio on Gardeners’ Question Time. Several asked to see our now famous Helesia carolina (snowdrop tree), the subject of Nigel’s question to GQT’s panel. Which reminds me, I must get started on following the panel’s advice to layer it in order to propagate it by layering (no pressure then!)  What a cultured group to start our garden visits with!

The weather forecast promises warmer days coming into the Easter weekend, so I hope you find time to get out into your gardens too.

All best wishes

Ladybird Su