Spring is Sprung


Our lovely new visitors' hub
Bit of a delay this week with writing blog post. My laptop’s been in to the repair shop, where the technicians found a hither to unknown problem of a word file crashing the system every time I tried to send it via email. A bit of a pity as the document is the final draft of the new guide book we’re preparing. Anyway, my trusty technicians, Richard and Ryan found a ‘work around’, and my computer is up and running again.
Map making for the guide book


The guide book is coming together quite nicely now, and I’ve prepared a map for visitors too. Just a few finishing touches to do, like a key to help folk navigate their way around the garden, the idea being that it serves as a self-guided walk. All done in plenty of time for our first opening in 2021.

Elsewhere in the garden, Spring has sprung.
Snowdrops (Galanthus) down by the dingle


An old-fashioned daffodil that is mildly scented, down by the pond
The daffodils have joined the snowdrops in brightening up the garden. The pretty blue flowers of the periwinkle (Vinca major) are dotted all around the dingle. I know many gardeners despair of it, because of the dense mat it forms (it is also a problem weed in places like New Zealand and Ausatalia where it was introduced by European settlers). Where it grows within Betley Court Gardens, along the romantic Victorian garden walk, it’s an incredibly useful plant. The low-growing habit helps hold our sandy banks together, preventing precious soil washing into the stream. Much as I celebrate its beauty and utility in the dingle, we have the variegated form growing in the formal flower beds. For one, I’m not an admirer of variegated leaves generally. In the formal beds, thought, the low-growing tangled nature of the plant makes managing and weeding the beds very difficult. Its gradually being weeded out! An example of the maxim 'a weed is only a weed if its a plant in the wrong place'.
The blue-flowered periwinkle (Vinca major)


When I was taking my RHS horticulture exams, back in the noughties, we had many wonderful lecturers, but one, Harry Delany, always used to tell us interesting stories about plants. Primarily, I think it worked as a learning aid, but these stories are always fun to share. One of these concerned the periwinkle, a somewhat unexpected inspiration for the design of an Olympic torch. The story goes that Ralph Lavers, the architect, was looking for an idea for his submission for the competition to design the torch for the 1948 London games. For whatever reason, he found himself pulling apart the flower of a periwinkle when inspiration struck. In the centre, he found the pistil, the female part of the periwinkle flower, and used a stylized version of this as the basis for his design. The judges liked it so much his design was chosen for the 1948 London Games (the austerity games held after World War Two), and reused eight years later for the 1956 Melbourne Games.
Quick drawing of the pistil of the flower Vinca major
Ralph Lavers' design for the Olympic torch, made for the 1948 London Olympic Games

You can see for yourself, if you dissect one of these flowers, although please don’t take flowers from the wild!
Narcissus Tete-a-Tete, a small, early flowering daffodil, perfect for window boxes

 I’ve planted up some flower boxes to cheer up the front of the house, this week. They’ll sit in the ‘windows’ of the porch, once it’s had a tidy up, and hopefully bring some cheer to the forlorn frontage of Betley Court.

British grown plants
I was really pleased to find British grown plants in B & M of all places. I like to use British-grown plants where possible, as it reduces the chance of spreading certain diseases. Just as people are deeply concerned at the spread of Covid19 in humans, the horticulture world is worried about the spread of diseases like Xylella fastidiosa, a horrible disease that stops the affected plant from taking up water by killing the water carrying cells (xylem). Although carried exclusively by sap-sucking aphids, obviously, if you plant and infected plant in your garden, it will be spread quite quickly by your resident greenflies etc. Although the disease has been found in areas of France, it hasn’t reached the UK, yet, and it’s interesting that a budget chain store is sourcing UK-grown plants already. Perhaps in future we will see more of this, in an attempt to curb the spread of diseases?


All best wishes

Ladybird Su







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