Public Places The Year at Bodnant
After Christmas: As soon as we get back after Christmas, we’ve only got so many weeks before the ‘show’ starts and the visitors start pouring in. It’s a really critical time to make sure that everything is mulched and everything is pruned. We will use the cherry picker to tie in and prune all the wall trained plants, of which we have a vast amount. Then its general maintenance, tidying and making sure everything is looking as good as it can for when the visitors start arriving in greater numbers.
We have two arborists on site and they will be flat out doing as much tree work as possible to ensure that they’re safe. They will also prune before the bird nesting season starts. There’s also a lot of project work in the winter. With the new areas being opened, that’s the time a lot of heavy contractor work will be going on as well.
January: Pretty much the whole month of January is spent tying the Laburnum Arch in and pruning it.
Easter: Before you know it, it’s Easter, and that is when the garden has to look immaculate. It’s a rush, from the daffodils to the tulips and the magnolias, and then we are at that point when the garden is looking fantastic with all the rhododendrons in bloom as well. Then it’s all about general maintenance - mowing and weeding. We do quite a lot of turf maintenance in the spring.
Summer: All of our volunteers will be busy, weeding, edging, dead heading, mowing and keeping the place looking tidy. Dead heading the roses, spraying a little bit and keeping the paths clean and free of weeds.
Then another three weeks, after the Laburnum Arch has flowered in July, cutting off the dead heads so all the vigour goes into new growth, and ensuring there aren’t any poisonous seeds lying around anywhere.
“Friday Tidy” on a weekly basis to ensure that the garden is looking as good as it can for the weekend.
Autumn: Leaf collecting and putting the garden to bed, cutting all the herbaceous stuff back. This is the time when we are doing a lot of alterations to borders. August, September, October, moving things around in the borders, lifting and splitting herbaceous plants to improve the artistic effect of the borders, which I always enjoy. Then planting as well, tree planting, planting bulbs by the thousand (30,000 extra snowdrops last year alone)!
That’s a newish introduction, the amount of bulbs, which provides the under canopy. There’s all sorts of things that have come in in the last few years. It may only be a small area, but it picks that area up no end by having that extra layer.
Winter: Then we start the project work again because we've got a big schedule to get through to improve the whole garden and open it up. There’s never a dull moment really. We never get to the point where we can sit down and say “well, that’s done”.
104 I PC JUNE/JULY 2016
risk of potential problems with regards to diseases and pests, the team have an extensive quarantine system in place, with at least a six week period before anything goes into the garden. “We have, in the past, had an issue with phytophthora, or sudden oak death, which affected what we could take in and out of the site. We are clear of that now, thankfully.” To prevent another outbreak of phytophthora in the rhododendrons, the team now prune them by thinning out the canopy to create more airflow. “In the upper and lower Rose Gardens we had an issue with very high nutrient levels in the soil. On analysis, phosphorous was more or less off the scale,” Mark tells me, so they have had to pare back with their use of fertiliser. “We're using just a straight nitrogen
fertiliser now, just to get everything going a bit. Spraying the roses is kept to the bare minimum that we can get away with. If we do see something, if it can be left, it will be left, just to keep the chemical usage as low as we can.” Organic methods of control are also used, with a lot of mulch put on the garden. “Quite often, we buy it in because we can’t generate the quantities that we would like on site. We use pine bark, which we get delivered by the articulated lorry load. It works well because it not only reduces the weeds but also supplies the plants with nutrients: and it’s a good control for blackspot and things like as it tends to bury any fungal spores.” “I know the glyphosate decision is coming up, so we’re keeping an eye on that. At the moment, we use RoundUp ProVantage to reduce the amount we are putting on. We also go out with a flame weeder, so if there are annuals in the beds we can burn them off with propane guns. It’s saving time on hoeing and on chemicals,” Mark explains. “Things like the brick path would be the no mix system. That involves staying late because we can’t put it down with visitors. It’s an after work thing and then roping off and making sure it’s all dry. Otherwise, we end up with
footprints across the lawn.” Talking of lawns, they were all looking very
well cared for. John tells me that Mark is the go to man for turf care. “We’ve just had an Air2G2 in yesterday for eleven hours, and shared it out between five of us. That was the first time, just to see if it makes a difference. After the winter, there’s been a huge amount of water retention and it doesn’t take much, at the moment, before it wells up. The last couple of days we have been trying to get on top of compaction,” Mark says. “We have a good network of paths, but we do have pinch points, particularly on the terraces and especially where people with disabilities have to go on the grass instead of down the steps. But we’re quite proactive in closing areas off if we see the turf getting particularly hammered. We’ve got alternative routes that people can use.” When creating new paths, a root
protection mesh is used to reduce the amount of compaction on the tree roots close to the surface. “We've got quite a collection of champion trees here,” John tells me proudly. “Around twenty or so, which are the tallest of their kind in the UK. We’ve lost one or two in the high winds recently, so we are quite careful how we manage the rootzones. For example, we had a big oak tree that we had concerns about, with a lot of compaction around the rootzone, so we’ve now made an exclusion area and put mulch down. The ground was broken up with an airspade to take the compaction out and composted bark put over the top. Then we put spring/summer early bulbs in rather than it being a mass of composted bark.” There is a lot going on from a conservation
point of view at Bodnant too. “There's quite a lot of work with the wildlife and meadows. We’ve got some really good wildflower meadows and we’re working with local experts to improve the quality and the diversity of our meadow plants. We’ve put up loads of nest boxes in association with local bird watching groups which have
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