Phil Seabrook Horticulture

Now is a good time for trimming Viburnum tinus. The best of the flowering is past and cuting now will control the size before the shrub starts putting on new growth which will bear the flowers next year. It also helps by removing the eggs of the Viburnum Beetle (Pyrrhalta viburni) which have been laid within the young stems and covered in excretion.
🪲

It’s my birthday! Well, not my actual birthday (that was last week) but the 10 year anniversary of me picking myself up from being made redundant and becoming self-employed.

Philip Seabrook sitting in a tree. P-R-U-N-I-N-G.

Well that was a most enjoyable day!

An email received in the middle of the night on Saturday saw me joining the build of the show garden at on Wednesday. My responsibility was 10 yew balls and a yew hedge which formed the backdrop to the garden. The hedge was being planted when I arrived and is made of seven large rootballed yew trees.

Many thanks to for the opportunity to work on such an important garden. Best of luck in your prejudging tomorrow.

Also great to work alongside the landscaping team from and and her team of planters.

These are teaser photos. You’ll have to visit the show or watch the tv coverage to see the garden in all its glory!

All one plant.

It's now easier to email Phil Seabrook Horticulture

Wisteria taming at the distillery. Three tonne bags of dead and extraneous growth removed, new wires installed and the remaining (for now) branches retrained.

Cutting a big yew hedge that somebody else started but was unable to finish (for legitimate personal reasons). This is St John’s Jerusalem, a 13th century chapel built by the Knight Hospitallers and now managed by the National Trust.

My subsidiary company now has its very own logo!

Another tip-top of the class logo design by !

Time to cut the wild patch. Brushcut, clear, rake, clear, strim, rake, clear, strim, rake, rake, rake, clear. I’ll mow it next visit and up until the snowdrops poke their heads up.

I was advised by a former marketing professional that if I offer specific services I should separate them out. As the topiary care side of my business has been growing and growing I’ve decided now is the time to partition it off and give it its own identity.

So, for continued insight into my boxwood and topiary adventures please go and follow on Instagram and search for Tip-Top Topiary on Facebook.

This page will still be used for my other horticultural shenanigans and gardening whimsy.

Finally some decent dry weather so I can get on and continue with my box moth caterpillar spraying round; and not before time too! First caterpillars of the second generation for the year found today.
🐛
🐛

The idea of "Scout Scarf Day" on August 1 is that all active and former scouts are requested to wear their scout scarfs in public to make the "Spirit of Scouting" visible: Once a Scout - Always a Scout! The date of the event commemorates the very first Scout Camp on Brownsea Island in 1907.

I fall into the “active scout” category as when I’m not trimming topiary I’m a Cub Scout leader with 6th Sevenoaks (Kemsing) Scout Group.

🚨 Watch out, moths about! 🚨

I was sent this picture last night by a client in Canterbury. The countdown now begins to spraying round 2.

(FAO )

Box moth chrysalis found today in Sevenoaks. This means that after treating 3,880 square meters of box hedging and topiary over the past 2 weeks Round 1 of spraying is now over!
🐛
Round 2 will most likely be starting in the first week of July. Time to get my equipment checked over and products restocked before I start it all over again.
🦋

They were slow to wake up this year but they’re awake now and my goodness they’re hungry!
🐛

Cydalima perspectalis, the box moth caterpillar is the final entry in my Boxwood Rogues Gallery. Heavy infestations can defoliate, and ultimately kill, plants. Not content with making our lives difficult just once, there can be 3/4 generations a year.
🐛
Best treated with a biological insecticide containing the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis as this has been shown to be harmless to other wildlife. There are no products licensed for the domestic market but one can be found on Amazon if you can read the German instructions! There are products available to licensed professionals.
🐛
A good treatment regime will keep the the pest at bay and damage to a minimum.
🐛

It has been a very frustrating start to this years box moth life cycle. Rising temperatures in April started to wake them up but an unusual southward shift in the jetstream paused their activity. With temperatures rising again they are now becoming active but the low air pressures have brought unsettled weather with lots of rain meaning I am still unable to spray my first box feed and caterpillar control application!
🌧
Forecasters predict that the jetstream will shift north next week bringing more settled warmer and drier weather; perfect for spraying.
🐛
I’m keeping a close eye on the situation but my sprayer and personally developed feed formulation are ready to go!
🏎

Pushing into new territory for a consultation in Canterbury. Discovered hedges with box blight. Immediately sprayed with fungicide treatment to kill spores and will be back in a couple of weeks to remove infected stems. Fortunately client thinks hedges are too tall anyway so it’ll be an all over height reduction by 5-10cm. The cones, balls and spiral also need reshaping.
🪚
Unfortunately I found my first box moth caterpillar of the year though there were no signs of recent feeding, probably because temperatures are still quite low. Boxwood spider mite is also present but of a lesser concern.
🐛
topiarytuesday

I don’t post much about flowers and my Instagram is mostly green or, most recently, deciduous trees in winter; so here’s a pink Camellia japonica to brighten things up.
🌸
Ok ok, I like it because I prune it. It flowers on last years new growth so is pruned immediately after flowering to give the shrub plenty of time to produce new flowering stems for next year’s display.
🌸

BY LAW, anyone who uses ANY pesticide, fungicide or weedkiller professionally (i.e. for payment) must have received adequate training in using pesticides safely and be skilled in the job they are carrying out. They must comply with the DEFRA/HSE Code for the Safe use of Pesticides. There are legal responsibilities covering the storage and professional use of pesticides which are covered by The Food and Environment Protection Act 1985 (FEPA) and Control of Pesticide Regulations 1986 (COPR).
I am currently on a round of box blight management spraying and will soon be starting the box moth caterpillar control. I use professional grade products and apply them fully within the requirements of the law. My training and qualifications mean that I am applying these products to ensure minimal risk to myself, my clients, their pets and the environment.

Times they are a’changing.
🚚
For sometime I’ve known my van was on its last legs. The evolution of my business model also meant that it spent 90% of its time almost empty. A faded ex Royal Mail transit. van wasn’t exactly portraying the image of the level of services I wished it to either. So time for an upgrade.
🛻
May I present, The Topiary Truck!
🌳🛻🌳
topiarytuesday # buxus

More fruit trees started on the road to productive recovery this week. An overgrown pear and an overpruned Bramley. Both have decent framework for me to work with but the pear was seeing a drop in fruiting quality due to congested branches and disease. Opening up the crown reduces the quantity of fruit bud for the tree to support and allows light and air into the centre of the tree to help reduce the fungal attacks the tree has been suffering with lately.
🍐
The Bramley has been subjected to repeat overpruning so has also developed an over crowded crown but with strong vertical growths and little fruit bud. The particularly important thing to know when pruning Bramleys is that they are partial tip-bearers so if all of the growing tips are removed every year that is a significant quantity of potential fruit being destroyed.
🍏

🚨NOT MY WORK! 🚨NOT MY WORK! 🚨NOT MY WORK!

This is how NOT to prune an apple tree. All of last year’s growth has been cut off leaving nothing to mature and develop fruit buds. The constant cutting to the same height has created a mass of densely packed twisted stubs that will restrict pe*******on of light and airflow increasing the chance of disease. The tree will react by putting on loads of strong, vertical, unproductive growth creating an umbrella of leaves that will shade any fruit that is lucky enough to be set preventing it from ripening fully. The tree will put more energy into growing new shoots than it will growing fruit anyway. Next year, after another disappointing cropping season, the tree will look “untidy” and the whole sorry vicious cycle will start again.
😭

Another renovation project. I worked out from the growth that this tree was last pruned in the winter of 2017/18. It had been pruned too hard then and had thrown up a mass of strong verticals that needed thinning out. It was also riddled with canker.
🍏
There’s a saying that you should be able to throw your hat clean through the centre of an apple tree. Well not in year one of a renovation! Renovation pruning should be done gradually over at least three years so as not to shock the tree by taking off too much but also to keep the regrowth under control.
🍏
The client gifted me some bottles of the juice he had made from last years crop. I can’t remember the variety of the one on the left but the middle bottle (and in the glass) is Laxton’s Fortune, an offspring of Cox’s Orange Pippin and the bottle on the right contains the juice of Discovery.
🍏

This grape vine needed a serious talking to to return it to the straight and narrow. It hadn’t been pruned last winter so had two years worth of growth and had been pruned pretty badly before that. Three ton bags of waste were removed and most of that was completely dead. All the dead and unproductive stems were removed as well as the unruly growth leaving only a new framework of young stems covered in buds.
🍇

First year of renovation on this apple tree (and there are two more further down the garden). Removed a third of the growth starting with the damaged, crossing and congested branches before thinning the fruiting spurs sound the perimeter.
🍏
When pruning fruit trees (especially renovation jobs) only a third of the branches should be removed per year until the desired shape is achieved. Over-pruning just results in vigorous and unproductive vertical growth that will just cause more problems later on. Despite how frequently I see it, pollarding is never the answer.

I look forward to pruning this characterful apple tree every year. It used to be in an orchard next to a farm house but it’s the last tree left, and the farm house has gone, and the farm is now a housing estate close to the centre of town but the tree fruits on 💪.