Beth Chatto's Plants & Gardens

An extract from Beth Chatto's Drought Resistant Planting:

'The overall appearance of the Gravel Garden changes little during the winter, appearing like a stage set-in-waiting, coming to life when pale winter sunlight illuminates a quiet scene of colour and form, It is always a welcoming environment to walk through, even on the dullest day. Throughout this landscape of heights and hollows. grasses in flower, tall or short, gauzy or bulky, illuminate the scene in shades of buff, honey, orange and gold.'

This week with gardener Scott:

With our early start time in the garden, it’s really noticeable how dark the mornings are at this time of year. Added to the fading light of late afternoon, we have to getting going with all the jobs on our list!

The biggest priority at this time of year is cutting back the spent perennials in the Water Garden and Woodland Garden as these areas have many emerging bulbs beginning to push through, such as early snowdrops and leucojum found by the pond edges.

However we take great care not to cut everything down or ‘tidy up’ too much, leaving plenty of stems standing and leaf material on the ground giving winter interest and importantly for insects and wildlife to make use of.

On Tuesday, the whole team had a great time making Christmas wreaths in the propagation house. The afternoon was organised by Annie from propagation, with wreath bases made by Interns Holly and Hannah, and using cuttings collected from the garden by everyone. It really is starting to feel like Christmas!

1. Annie with her masterpiece!
2. Cathy & Malin cutting back in the early morning
3/4. Before and after cutting back in the Water Garden
5. Emerging Leucojum aestivum 'Gravetye Giant'
6. Clearing epimedium to let the bulbs come through

An extract from Beth Chatto's Garden Notebook:

'Although there have been a few frosty mornings with the grass remaining white for an hour or two, the temperature has not fallen very low. There has only been the thinnest film of ice on the ponds.
On a crisp, sunny morning I walk out my backdoor into the little Mediterranean garden and see good foliage all around me. Although we are at the lowest ebb of the year, there is almost total ground cover in this part of the garden. The sky is blue; the colour and texture of every leaf stands out clearly. The main spines of the borders are made with rosemary, lavender, cistus and phlomis fruticosa.'

A week in the garden with gardener Malin.

This week the temperature has dropped and we’ve had some lovely frosty mornings. The oak trees are starting to drop their leaves and the garden team have spent a lot of time leaf blowing and fishing leaves out of the ponds. We leave quite a thick layer of leaves on the borders as a mulch. By next spring perennials will all grow through the leaves and you won’t be able to see them. We try and leave seed heads and grasses for as long as possible for winter interest and wildlife habitats, but in borders where we’ve got a lot of early spring bulbs, we’ve now started to cut perennials back. It’s a lovely job to do as it’s preparing the garden for the next season and it makes the gardeners look forward to spring!

There's nothing like a touch of frost to highlight the structure and beauty of the garden at this time of year.
In the foreground, the heads of Phlomis 'Edward Bowles' and the upright, skeletal remains of Verbascum bombyciferum look wonderful when gilded with frost.

Team Chatto! 😀

A huge thank you to Julie Skelton: photography for working her magic and capturing a wonderful autumnal group photo of us in the Water Garden.

This weekend we invited all the lovely interns back who have worked with us over the past year. We met up on Saturday morning and the weather was just perfect! After a little meet and greet, we all headed out to the reflection area to make a dead hedge and plant lots of bulbs.
We want this area to be a place where you can sit and enjoy the nice view over the reservoir, but also an area that’s good for wildlife. In summer, we let the grass grow into a meadow and just mowed paths through, but now we’ve strimmed it all off and raked it to let it grow back in spring.
After a nice lunch outdoors and a walk around the garden, we had a wreath making workshop in the warmth with Christmas music pumping out of the speakers. In the evening we got to enjoy the garden lit up by the full moon and the starry sky, it was absolutely beautiful! A barn owl came to say goodnight as we were sat around the fire pit grilling marshmallows and chatting about gardening. Thank you to all our fabulous interns for your help this year, it’s been a pleasure getting to know you!

Did you see our new column in the recently revived Amateur Gardening magazine?

We were delighted to be asked by editor Kim Stoddart to contribute to Amateur Gardening magazine fortnightly, sharing news from the Gardens including what the garden and propagation team have been up to.

📖Make sure to look out for the next issue in shops this week!

🌱Propagating paeonia with production assistant Miya.

After a wet week, plants seem to be enjoying soaking up the rain and low autumn light before going deeper into dormancy here on our stock beds. The temperature dropped lower this week with the air feeling very crisp and fresh.

These conditions bring the perfect opportunity to lift peonies from the stock beds. We will be busy lifting and dividing peonies for the next few weeks before the colder weather arrives. Here, we propagate ten peony species, but Paeonia daurica subsp. mlokosewtschii, - Molly the witch, a truly special peony, was one of Beth's favourites. Emily kindly shared her fond memory about Beth’s connection with this plant saying that she often used the foliage and lemon-yellow flowers for her flower arrangement.
The reddish pink shoots are now poking out of the ground, so with a fork, I lift the plants carefully; their fresh succulent like roots are plump and waiting for spring. As another common name, Caucasian peony suggests, this plant is indigenous to the Caucasus mountains. The reddish pigment on the new shoots contains sugar and amino acid which works as an anti-freeze ensuring winter protection.

We propagate Molly the witch using many different methods which is a real team effort. Emily picks ripe seeds in late summer to be sown fresh. The very best of the seedlings are then selected and pricked out; some of which are grown for a further 5 years until we are happy with the root systems. Once ready, we release most for sale, but some are kept to be planted back into our stock bed to carry on the process. Roots that are too long to fit in pots during the division process are trimmed off and used for root cutting materials. This exceptionally beautiful plant is so special and offers so much, from the lemon-yellow, cup shaped flowers in late spring, to the glaucous green foliage which is very attractive for many months.

1. Emerging foliage of peony
2. Lemon-yellow blooms of Peony 'Molly the Witch'
3. Jewel-like seeds in late summer
4. Ripe seeds sown when they are fresh
5. Seed germination
6. Divisions ready to pot up
7. Root cuttings laid out in trays

A week in the garden with Head Gardener Åsa.

Self-seeders are such an integral part of the Gravel Garden’s planting style. We purposefully leave empty spaces for annuals, biennials and to a certain degree perennials such as Verbena bonariensis. If they become too successful, we simply ‘edit’ out surplus plants. This year we ended up with a wall of verbena in one of the borders – pretty, but only intended as an accent. To be able to access the planting hidden behind the verbena and add some white fox tail lilies, Eremurus himalaicus, we removed most of the plants. It might seem a bit harsh, but we’ve left more than enough for next year and there are plenty of verbenas in other areas, which we’ll leave for winter interest.

We spend a lot of time pruning during the winter months. Being a small team we need to work efficiently to ensure all the jobs get done on time. Having the right tools – and knowing how to use them confidently – is key, so we spent a morning with Estate Manager Ben, practicing using an electric pole saw for lighter pruning jobs.

One thing we want to focus on next year is improving the way we compost our garden waste. Ben and Scott attended a workshop, run by RhizoPhyllia, a while ago, and we’ve been making plenty of progress since. The first compost ‘loaf’ is now ready and a spade full was placed in a bucket of lukewarm rainwater to make some compost extract. After stirring, the solution was strained to separate the organic matter from the liquid containing the microorganisms. This solution could be diluted and used to improve soil and plant health. We’ll continue experimenting next year and will keep you posted on the progress.

We’ve also been busy preparing for our Garden Intern Reunion weekend. We’re planning on spending most of the time outdoors, making a dead hedge out of materials collected from the garden and also plant some bulbs in an area adjacent to our woodland garden. More on this in another post.

1. Apprentice Hannah collecting material for a dead hedge
2. Before ‘editing’ out Verbena bonariensis
3. Afterwards-we accessed the permanent planting and added some foxtail lilies
4. Gardener Scott planting Eremurus himalaicus at the back of the border
5. Gardener Cathy practicing using the pole saw
6. Straining the compost extract

🌱Winter propagation with production assistant Megan.

As we reach the end of the autumn season, the evenings are closing in and we have been presented with several heavy downpours. For us in the propagation team, this is a great time to retreat inside and turn our attention to winter propagation and maintenance as we cease taking softwood cuttings.

Looking at winter propagation, we begin focusing our attention on root cuttings- a simple method used to propagate several different genus of plants including acanthus, pelargonium, houttuynia and cichorium. This process involves digging up plants from our stock bed or turning out stock plants grown in pots, and cutting off approximately ⅓ of the root. During this time, it is also a great opportunity to check the general health and quality of the plants and also refresh their potting media.

📖Read more here:
https://www.bethchatto.co.uk/discover/our-blog/guides/winter-propagation-root-cuttings.htm

A last hurrah from the Water Garden's deciduous trees offering the perfect backdrop for the evergreens and evergreys of the Scree Garden.

Plants include:
-lavandula
-libertia
-onosma
-perovskia (salvia)
-phlomis
-thymus

An extract from Beth Chatto's Shade Garden:
'For vertical accents we planted both the American swamp cypress (Taxodium distichum) and the Chinese dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides). As these amazing conifers have grown we have already been obliged to remove several of them since, like most inexperienced gardeners, forty years ago we had no idea how much space such trees demand. Those that remain now add nobility to the overall planting, soaring like church spires above my 'village' of supporting trees and shrubs.'

This week with gardener Cathy-

With temperatures continuing to drop, it’s now time to move all tender plants indoors and protect others from frost damage. First we moved the agave plants from the Gravel and Scree Gardens into the polytunnel where they will stay until the risk of frost has passed in spring. They are a wonderful addition with sculptural leaves but they are incredibly spiky, so we took care when moving them, wearing gloves and goggles for protection. Next it was the turn of the gunnera to be protected from the elements. These giant rhubarb are too big to dig up and move so we have a different way of keeping them tucked up in winter. This year's leaves and stalks are removed and graded into a rough order of size. We then create tents over the emerging new leaf growth, putting the old leaves upside down and weighing them down with the leaf stalks. We also continued our improvements to the Reservoir Garden. Over the past couple of weeks we have been working on moving and splitting existing plants in the beds and looking at where there were gaps in the borders that needed filling. This week came the exciting task of adding plants to existing perennial clumps and putting in new plants. This was a mixture of plants in pots from the nursery and bare root plants we dug up from the nursery stock beds. These plants will settle into thier positions over winter and be ready to start growing in spring. We are looking forward to seeing all the new planting combinations next year and how this part of the garden develops.

1. Apprentice Hannah moving agave from the Gravel Garden for winter.
2. Gunnera
3. Hannah removing the huge leaves.
4. The crowns which need to be protected over winter.
5. Their winter tipi homes!
6. The team discussing the plan for the Reservoir Garden planting.
7. Scott laying out and planting.
8. Malin watering the plants in.

Golden, autumn sunshine reaching through the oak branches, perfectly captured by Skelton: photography.

Although a week or so behind this time last year, autumn colours have finally developed across the garden.
The deciduous foliage of Taxodium distichum (left) colours to a spectacular rust-brown before the leaves start to fall.
The English oaks (centre) are always the last to colour up and shed their leaves- typically waiting until December.

🍂 Which trees is your go to for autumn colour?

🌱A week in propagation with Growing Manager Marc.

As we move through late autumn, with the nights getting longer and the days colder, our thoughts turn naturally to warm afternoons tucked up indoors perusing seed catalogues and making plans for spring. Yet here in the production department, our focus remains on completing the winter clean and the continued propagation of plants.

The winter clean takes on two forms. Primarily it is the cleaning, w**ding and redressing of the plants which are available for sale. This allows us to check on the quality of the plants, the individual plant’s health and chance to move any more tender plants under cover for the winter. Secondly, on the dry, bright days it is a chance to get out onto the stock beds, the home of many of our mother plants, to source plant material and cut back many of the herbaceous perennial plants, tidying up dead foliage, w**ding and re-mulching to help protect the plants over winter. As with the potted plants, it is an opportunity to check on plant health, damage caused by pest and diseases and renew any labels which may have become broken, damaged or lost during the summer months.

This week when the weather has worked against us, and the rain has driven us indoors, we have consoled ourselves with propagation splits from potted stock plants such as Sisyrinchium 'Californian Skies' and Sisyrinchium 'Quaint and Q***r'. A process which sees us turning out a stock pot, teasing the plant apart into individual rooted fans, cleaning, grading and repotting to grow on over the winter ready for spring.

1. Apprentices Hollie and Hannah mulching a recently cut back stockbed.
2 & 3. Before and after cutting back.
4 & 5. Production Assistant Keren splitting pot grown sisyrinchium.

This week with gardener Scott.

As we enter November, the autumn colours are really coming in to their own, especially in the low afternoon light of the Water Garden. Often one of the first trees to change from fresh green to a beautiful russet, is the magnificent Taxodium distichum that stands tall on the edge of the pond.

The team have moved on to the next phase of the Reservoir Garden project. We are closely assessing the plants that remain in the borders, moving some to better positions, taking some out for replanting in other parts of the garden and planning what new plants can go back into the gaps we have created. Part of this process involved looking at our stock beds and choosing suitable plants we can add to the scheme.

It’s been a great opportunity to learn more plants, look closely at the soil and make the borders more resilient for the future.

1. Sunset over the damp stockbed
2. Taxodium distichum
3: Åsa working in the Reservoir Garden
4: Malin working in the Reservoir Garden
5: Aster tataricus still flowering

🍂The wonderful buttery-yellow of molinia and pseudolarix.
Come and enjoy the striking autumn colours across the garden, now with reduced admission price until the end of the year.

Please see our website for opening times and prices:
https://www.bethchatto.co.uk/entrance.htm

It was great to be back at the Garden Museum for an evening of discussion with Arit Anderson and Henrik Sjöman about their new book- The Essential Tree Selection Guide.

Everything you need to know about selecting trees for climate resilience, carbon storage, species diversity and other ecosystem benefits all in one place- a huge thumbs up from all the horticulturists here!

Arit and Henrik were both a big part of our 2022 symposium which you can now watch here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrWeAIwB-hAFtsSl_JixjRUrpAfDu77Pk

Magical autumn light captured by gardener Scott yesterday.

1. The showstopping golden larch tree, Pseudolarix amabilis.
2. Sunlight streaming through the boundary oaks reaching the fluffy seedheads of Eutrochium purpureum.
3. Taxodium distichum finally starting to turn russet-brown.
4. The autumn colour of the golden larch against the still green oak.

We are thrilled to announce that each presentation and panel discussion from our 2022 symposium- Rewilding the Mind, is now available to watch on our YouTube channel.

We hope that by making these recordings accessible to all, we can inspire and ensure these important conversations are open to everyone.

A huge thank you to all of our previous speakers, and of course attendees, both in person and via live stream, for supporting the Beth Chatto Education Trust and ensuring these events continue.
Speaking of which- be sure to keep an eye out for details of our next symposium to be released soon!

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrWeAIwB-hAFtsSl_JixjRUrpAfDu77Pk

An extract from Beth Chatto's Garden Notebook:
'The long season is coming to an end, with almost the entire cast stepping forward for the last grand act. Background trees and shrubs take it in turn to present their contribution before they retreat into winter rest. Flower colours glow like freshly squeezed paint, undiluted by summer's overhead spotlight. There are mornings of 'mist and mellow fruitfulness', buckets and baskets of fruit, berries and intricately curved seed cases-too much to see or write about in one chapter.'

📷 Asa Gregers-Warg

A round up of the week in the garden with Malin:
The last week of October has been a rainy and windy one, it feels like autumn has finally arrived. In the garden the colours are changing to yellows and reds and the first snowdrops, Galanthus reginae-olgae, are flowering in the woodland. The garden team have continued last week’s project of clearing areas in the Reservoir Garden which will be planted in the next couple of weeks. On the wettest day we decided to organise and tidy our tool shed, now it’s so shiny in there we feel like taking our shoes off before entering!
Beth’s ornamental boat was taken out of the pond and the succulent display was moved into the glasshouse- we are as ready as we can be for autumn!🍂🍁

1. Taking the boat out of the pond
2. Cleaning ready for winter storage
3. Organising the tool shed
4 & 5. The succulent display tucked up for winter
6. A wet day in the garden
7. Autumn flowering Galanthus reginae-olgae
8. Sunshine in between the downpours

A brief pause in between downpours captured by head gardener Åsa.

Slowly but surely autumn colours are creeping into the garden. In the background, the golden larch, Pseudolarix amabilis, is hinting at the brilliant, burnt-orange spectacle that it is soon to be.

As with most grasses at this time of year, the fluffy seedheads of Pennisetum alopecuroides 'Black Beauty' look wonderful when caught by the sun.

The last couple of hot, dry summers have proven too much for this grass in the free-draining soil of the Reservoir Garden, so earlier this year, the garden team planted a few in the moisture-retentive soil of the Water Garden, and they are thriving!

🌾What are your favourite grasses at this time of year?

Now that the clocks have gone back and the nights are drawing in, we have entered our winter opening hours.

🕙The garden, nursery, shop and tearoom will be open Thursday- Saturday
10am-4pm

We hope you will join us to see the wonderful colours now developing across the garden.

Although the colours are gradually fading from the garden, all is not lost! Beautiful seedheads in a huge range of shapes and sizes, bring structure and texture to the borders throughout autumn and well into winter.

1. Ligularia japonica
2. Stipa calamagrostis
3. Phlomis, Allium nigrum and Eryngium giganteum
4. Marrubium libanoticum
5. Lunaria annua

An extract from Beth Chatto's Shade Garden:
'Backlit and beautiful as low sunlight falls through their petals, wandering parties of Japanese anemones rise above ferns where snowdrops and aconites covered the space in January and February. The lovely old variety Anemone x hybrida 'Honorine Jobert' (1.2./4ft) is unsurpassed. Its saucer-shaped, white flowers, filled with yellow stamens, raise my spirits for weeks, well into November. Standing tall and pure against a leafy background, they pick up the white variation in the eye-catching elder, Sambucus nigra 'Pulverulenta'.'

This week with apprentice Hannah:

Hey, I'm Hannah the new apprentice. I'm currently 8 weeks into my 2 year Horticulture Operative (level 2) course. I do a 50/50 split between the garden and propagation which lets me explore everything Beth Chatto's has to offer within horticulture. I've always thought flowers were pretty as well as good for the environment, but these past 8 weeks have taught me so much about the beauty of plants, not only in looks, but how they work and keep us and other living things alive.
This week we are at the end of October and it's definitely the middle of autumn! It's been a bit of a rainy week but with waterproofs and lots of jumpers, work in the garden has continued.
At the beginning of this week both the garden team and propagation team prepared for half term by collecting grasses and seed heads along with carving pumpkins, which we then used to set up autumnal displays in the Scree Garden, Water Garden, Tearoom and on the stock-bed walk.
Throughout the rest of this week, we have continued removing phacelia, forget-me-nots and poppies in the Reservoir Garden to make room for new, more interesting drought tolerant perennials.

1. Apprentice Hannah
2. Scott and Åsa creating the garden entrance display
3. The finished autumn throne
4 & 5. Weeding in the Reservoir Garden
6. A bumblebee on Phacelia tanacetifolia
7. Miscanthus in the Reservoir Garden

🍁🎃There's still three days left to come along to the Gardens for Halloween fun and autumn activities.

Join us in our craft area where we will be making autumn crowns and bookmarks, or perhaps you would prefer to make a terrifying twig skeleton!
We've loved seeing the photos of your visits, so thank you for sharing.

👻The fun continues until Saturday 28th 10am-5pm.

🎟Entry is free for children accompanied by an adult paying full garden admission.

🔗Follow the link for more information and to book:
https://www.bethchatto.co.uk/entrance.htm

In the realms of grasses, the majority of cultivated calamagrostis produce a strong upright vertical, unlike most others. Suitable for the dry garden or in a border to contrast against the more rounded outlines. Flower spikes tend to be equally narrow, but en-masse still provide a good effect. The popular hybrid C. x acutiflora occurs naturally (but rarely) in the wild, from C. epigejos and C. arundinacea. One of the main bonuses for the gardener is that it rarely produces fertile seed, unlike its prolific self seeding parents. C. brachytricha has a more bottlebrush-like flower heads, which looks stunning in a sunlight beam. Although deciduous, many will hold their shape over winter, still providing structure and habitat for insects and small animals.

1&2. Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster'
3&4. C. brachytricha
5&6. C. x acutiflora 'Oversdam'
7&8. c. x acutiflora 'Eldorado'

This week's round up with gardener Scott:

It has definitely felt more autumnal in the garden over the last few days with temperatures dropping noticeably from the previous weeks warmer weather. But that didn’t stop the garden team - joined this week by intern Josh from Pembroke College and Will who is beginning his horticultural journey.

We have begun one of our larger projects scheduled for this autumn - the development of the Reservoir Garden. After the prolonged drought of last summer followed by a wet winter, this area suffered some challenges that we are now hoping to rectify. We lost some plants here, and others, like forget-me-nots and poppies, took the opportunity to fill the empty spaces. Although they looked lovely, they took over a little and crowded out some of the more interesting plants we wanted to showcase. So when they finished flowering, they were removed and we sowed phacelia into the open ground to keep it w**d free and filled with plants until autumn. Now our job is to remove it to clear the borders so we can assess the remaining plants. We’ll decide which ones are working well, if we want to move any to other areas and importantly which new more drought tolerant plants we can now add into the border.

We also received training ahead of starting our plant audit. We want to document every single plant in the garden and bring our plant list up to date. This list will help us to identify plants we can propagate for the nursery, plants which may need replacing and plants we have in the stock beds which we may want to grow in the garden. It’s a big task but will be so worthwhile and a great opportunity to learn more plants.

Our Beth Chatto apprentice Hannah also helped set up this weeks plant ident. Be sure to stop by and check out what’s looking good in the garden now.

1. Team training ahead of our plant audit.
2. Interns Josh and Will.
3 & 4. Removing phacelia from the Reservoir Garden beds.
5. Apprentice Hannah putting together this week's plant ident.
6. The weekly plant ident at the garden entrance.

An extract from Beth Chatto's Drought-Resistant Planting:

'Although my hands are stiff with the cold air dropping suddenly like a shower on to my knees and writing pad, I need to catch for a moment the picture made by the sinking sun as it spotlights the group of a pale columnar grass, Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster'. So quickly the light moves, I can watch, as it dips below the farm headland, the last rays moving upward from the base of needle-like stems till they reach the straw-coloured flower heads outlined against the shadowed garden beyond, till the moment when each column disappears, as the light is switched off.'

🎃Halloween Fun and Autumnal Activities!🎃

This October half term (24th-28th October), come along to the Gardens to enjoy some Halloween fun and autumnal activities.

There will be a craft area in our tearoom tunnel with face stencils, autumn bookmark making and leaf crowns. Children can also mix up a witch’s brew in the mud kitchen area.

In the garden, our autumn throne will be the perfect spot to stop and have a photo taken.
Whilst visiting the garden, children can take part in a scavenger hunt – spot everything on the hunt and take home a mini pumpkin.

*Entry will be free to every child accompanied by an adult paying full garden admission.

Book tickets here:
https://www.bethchatto.co.uk/entrance.htm

In the garden this week with Åsa.

Mid-October and it’s suddenly starting to feel decidedly autumnal. What a contrast to last week’s glorious sunshine and unseasonably hot temperatures! Emily, our trainee Hollie and I spent the weekend at Great Dixter House and Gardens Autumn Plant Fair, spending two days meeting lots of lovely customers. A huge thank you to Fergus and his team for making the Dixter plant fairs such a special event.
The forecast for the upcoming weekend has hinted at the arrival of the first seasonal frost, so Emily, with the help of apprentice Hannah, rushed to move all the succulents, which have been on display outside Beth’s house all summer, into the little greenhouse, where they will be kept frost-free over the winter.
The garden team have been busy w**ding the Scree Garden, as well as the Canal Bed in the Water Garden. The latter used to be filled with moisture-loving plants, but mature trees now absorb most of the moisture, so the area will be replanted with perennials suited to dry and shady conditions this autumn. We also planned the work schedule for the next month and discussed which plants to use to fill empty gaps in the Reservoir Garden.
Our garden ponds were b**ged up on Tuesday and flushed through on Friday afternoon to remove duckw**d in the upper ponds.
Ben, who looks after our lawns and compost heaps, and gardener Scott attended a one-day soil health workshop with Eddie Bailey from Rhizophyllia this week, learning more about the soil food web and composting. Our nursery and gardens produce a huge amount of green waste each year and we’re keen on improving the quality of the compost we make, drawing on Eddie’s expertise.
We also had a visit from Ruth, Andrea and Paul from Cambridge University Botanic Gardens. It’s always great to meet other gardeners, sharing experiences and information.

Photos:
1. Great Dixter’s Autumn Plant Fair
2. Emily and apprentice Hannah moving succulents into the greenhouse
3. Gardener Malin removing the b**g to flush the ponds
4. Weeding the Scree Garden
5. Soil health / compost workshop with Eddie Bailey