Virgin Media Group Working Party

A Virgin Media (Birmingham) Group visited the Garden on Friday 21st February, as part of their Community Project support contribution.  This enthusiastic team took part in coppicing Hazels in our coppice area.  These were cut right back to near ground level, and graded into pea sticks, flower stakes and bean poles for use in the Kitchen Garden and Herbaceous Borders this season.



The hazel trees will soon regrow, within 2-3 years, and then can be coppiced again on a 5-7 year rotation.  Removing the dense shrub cover in the coppice area, also encourages the spread of woodland wildflowers, such as bluebells, wild daffodils, winter aconites and anemones.

They also planted shrubs in the Upper Wilderness borders as part of the restoration of the 18th Century tiered linear planting scheme in this area.

Thank you Virgin Media and Sustain who organised the day, for a very good day's work in this heritage garden.  We look forward to welcoming another two groups from Virgin Media in March 2014 to continue the Upper Wilderness project.



Selected snowdrops at the Garden

We are gradually developing a collection of snowdrops at the Garden, in addition to the widespread planting of naturalised snowdrops such as Galanthus nivalis and Galanthus nivalis 'Flore Pleno'.  The collection of snowdrops have been planted out in raised beds, and in the future they will be gradually introduced into the deciduous borders in the Lower Wilderness, where they will combine well with our mass plantings of Helleborus x hybridus, Cyclamen coum, and Eranthis hyemalis.

Here is a selection of some of our snowdrops in the raised beds, which you can see if you visit the garden at our next Snowdrop & Hellebore day on Sunday 16th February, 11.00am - 3.00pm, all welcome.

 

Galanthus plicatus 'Augustus'

Broad pleated leaves with attractive plump well rounded flowers

Increases well

 

 

         Galanthus elwesii 'Grumpy'

                    A popular snowdrop with the inner markings resembling a face

Galanthus 'Merlin'

 
A very attractive variety with inner petals totally green

We look forward to welcoming you to the Garden to view our extensive planting of hellebores, and our increasing range of snowdrops