Gardener’s Cuttings


Take a walk on the wild side at Rosemoor


To coincide with International Biodiversity Day on 22nd May the RHS is launching summer wildlife trails at its gardens to encourage the public to get out there identifying, monitoring, conserving and celebrating the variety of living things in gardens. Visitors to Rosemoor in Devon will be able to see things that the RHS is doing to attract and nurture biodiversity, with plenty of ideas that they can take home to use in their own gardens. A circular trail will be mapped out and visitors can take the self-guided tour at their leisure, making it a great way to see the gardens. Points of interest include ponds, compost heaps, log piles and hedges, which provide varied habitats for an array of wildlife. Visitors can learn how to make a success of home composting and how to make bug homes. And promoting biodiversity doesn’t have to be hard work – having even a small, low-maintenance area where you don’t cut the grass allows wild flowers to grow. Rosemoor is specially known for its dormice and bats. The trails will run throughout the summer until the end of August. www.rhs.org.uk/gardens


Shaftesbury Abbey guided herb walk


You can learn more about herbs and their uses if you join the popular Herb Walk at Shaftesbury Abbey Garden on Tuesday 8th June. Starting at 6pm, it will be rounded off by refreshments with a herbal theme. The Anglo-Saxon plants in the lovely gardens at the Abbey museum are some of the herbs that would have been used by the nuns of the abbey. The ‘Aethelgifu’s Herb Collection’ was created in 1988 under the direction of Lady Jane Renfrew of Lucy College, Cambridge, and named after the first Abbess, daughter of King Alfred the Great. The selection of herbs tries to reflect what is known of their users in those times, and what they used the herbs for, in cooking, dyeing cloth, strewing, as natural insecticides, and in medicine. Tickets are £6, £5 for senior citizens, which includes refreshments. As places are limited, please book in advance. Tickets are available from the Abbey office, on 01747 852910 or visit the website: www.shaftesburyheritage.org.uk


Rhododendron blossoms after 24 barren years


A rhododendron has defied one of Britain’s harshest winters to produce its first ever flowers after 24 barren years. The shrub was planted as a sapling in 1986 by Ray Brown, who then spent the next two decades tending it in the hope it would produce some blooms.


Rhododendron - flowering again after 24 barren years


Mr Brown, a gardener from Newton Abbott, had almost given up on his endeavour and was considering sawing the plant down because of its lack of colour.


But this year the 10ft rhododendron maccabeanum finally produced a flourish of white and yellow blooms, despite enduring the harsh winter temperatures, after he removed nearby trees.


‘’At one stage I thought about sawing it down but the enormous leathery pendulous leaves, which are the largest of any rhododendron in the world, are extremely attractive, so I spared it,” he said.


“This specimen was planted in the correct part of the garden in 1986. I waited and waited for the flowers as it grew a few inches a year until it was around 10 feet tall – but still no blooms appeared.


“Then last summer I chopped down the very tall and boring laurels that were growing all around it as they might have been stealing the light.


“It is now performing in full splendour bearing huge trusses of pale lemon, purple throated flowers.”


The rhododendron maccabeanum comes from north-east India and can live for hundreds of years and grow to be 50ft tall.


Cricket St Thomas gardens re-open after £300,000 restoration


£300,000 restoration at Cricket St Thomas


The historic gardens featured in the television sitcom ‘To The Manor Born’ have reopened after a £300,000 restoration. The project at Cricket St Thomas, near Chard, has seen the lakes and gardens restored to their former 19th century glory. The Grade II-listed gardens and grounds cover 160 acres and were originally created in the 19th century by


the second Lord Bridport who spent a fortune in making a chain of beautiful lakes and cascades. The lawns of the Regency country mansion Cricket House, are among the grounds restored under the project. They still feature large cedars under which Lord Nelson and his mistress Lady Hamilton are believed to have spent time. Among plants in the new grotto garden are heuchera, ligularia, iris, astilbe, persicaria, labelia and purple petticoats. Most of the larger animals from the former Cricket St Thomas Wildlife Park, which closed last year after 42 years, have been permanently re-homed in other appropriate zoos and wildlife parks.


Country Gardener 5


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