Staking and weeding

By Jodie Jones.

This week at Great Dixter, the tulips were still firing on all cylinders, in all the colours and all the shapes, with special mention for a particularly pretty soft yellow combination of ‘World Friendship’ tulips and Narcissus ‘Pipit’ in a low foam of forget me nots.

The rate of growth right now is astonishing and the beds already look full but this is only the beginning, and to keep the picture building requires the sort of complex 3D planning that Fergus excels at. So, we started the day in the Education Room, where he drew up one of his mind-bending mind maps to express what needs to be done in the next few weeks.

In a nutshell – it’s a lot.

There are dahlias and cannas to pot up, salvia and plectranthus cuttings to grow on and more seed to sow (foxgloves for next year and, in a few weeks, cosmos, tagetes and other replacement bedding to take over from the early displays which will finish in July). The clematis all need tying in, there are a couple of fig trees still to prune, and more cuttings to be taken. 

We are also back into regular sweeping and watering season, and all the seedlings need regular checking and potting on to keep them growing well but, said Fergus, the most urgent jobs were staking and weeding. So that was what I did.

There were a lot of chunky hesperis plants around the garden that needed sturdy canes, although the group I worked on in the Peacock Garden were surrounded by Beth’s poppies, so I had to tread carefully.

At coffee break, the world’s boldest robin was back at the mess room for some lemon drizzle cake.

And then I spent the whole of the rest of the day, along with half the team, carefully weeding the new High Garden bed. We pulled out an invasion of atriplex, speedwell, cleavers, and the odd bit of bindweed, but left most other things, including lots of delightfully downy little hesperis seedlings, and we chatted, and the sun shone, and it was all extremely pleasant.