Everything you need to grow...
Hot off the trowel
Gardens to Gander ​​
It’s February and it's snowdrop time. The following gardens are adrift right now. ​
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​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​West Dean Gardens open Mon-Fri 09.30am - 5.00pm.
Sat-Sun 09.00am - 5.00pm
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The National Garden Scheme (NGS)
Look on their website and find a garden near you to visit.
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Woolbeding Gardens.
The gardens open again on Thursdays and Fridays only as from 24th April. Pre booking is required for everyone.
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Insector Clueso!
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The Asian Hornet has arrived in the UK, and hundreds of nests have been destroyed. However, it looks as though they have been the tip of the iceberg. They are avaricious insects that target most of our pollinators.
Our honey bees are at serious risk of their hives being invaded and the colonies being wiped out. These predators are smaller than the European Hornet, which is not a threat. The Asian Hornet can be identified by its yellow leg ends and a wide orange band towards the rear of its abdomen.
If you see one, please report it using the iPhone and Android ‘Asian Hornet Watch’ app. Alternatively, email: alertnonnative@ceh.ac.uk
please include a photo if you can do so safely.
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Weeders Digest
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Wall & Water Gardens - Gertrude Jekyll
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When a fellow garden club member recently acquired their new property — with a delightfully walled serene lily pond garden designed by Gertrude Jekyll — it seemed like the perfect time to return to Jekyll’s own wisdom on water in the garden.
Wall & Water Gardens is a timeless classic, written by one of the greatest garden designers of the English tradition. In its pages, Jekyll shares practical yet poetic guidance on designing dry-walled terraces, rock-gardens, stream gardens, ponds and marshy water features — and crucially, on selecting the right plants for water, marsh and alpine settings.
We recommend this book to anyone who loves the elegant marriage of stone, water and planting — If you’re curious about what kinds of aquatic or moisture-loving plants to try or how to balance structure and wildness around water, Jekyll’s book is still a deeply relevant, inspiring guide.
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​https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wall-Water-Gardens-Gertrude-Jekyll/dp/0881430021​
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Top gardening jobs for February
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​SPRING IS IN SIGHT!
This month, there are signs of the approaching spring, with bulbs appearing and wildlife waking up as day lengthens and temperatures increase. There’s plenty to do indoors this month to prepare for the season ahead. Outdoors, as the garden comes to life again, it is time to prune certain shrubs and climbers, such as
as Wisteria.
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Top gardening jobs this month:
1. Prepare vegetable seed beds and sow some vegetables under cover.
2. Chit potato tubers.
3. Protect blossom on apricots, nectarines and peaches.
4. Net fruit and vegetable crops to keep the birds off
5. Prune winter-flowering shrubs that have finished flowering.
6. Divide bulbs such as snowdrops and plant those that need planting ‘in the green’.​
7. Prune wisteria.
8. Renovate overgrown hedges with pruning.
9. Prune conservatory climbers such as Bougainvillea.
10. At the end of the month, start cutting back deciduous ornamental grasses to allow new growth to come through
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Musings
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‘February, a form
Pale vestured, wildly fair -
One of the North Wind’s daughters,
With icicles in her hair’
Edward Fawcett
‘I thought the world was cold in death;
The flowers, the birds, all life was gone,
For January’s bitter breath
Had slain the bloom and hushed the song.
And still the earth is cold and white,
And mead and forest yet are bare;
But there’s a something in the light
That says the germ of life is there.’
Jane Goodwin Austin
‘When February sun shines cold
There comes a day when in the air
The wings of winter slow unfold
And show the golden summer there’
Philip Henry Savage
‘The February sunshine steeps your boughs and tints the buds
and swells the leaves within.’
William C Bryant
‘A small birds twitters on a leafless spray
Across the the snow waste, breaks a gleam of gold.
What token can I give my friend today
But February blossoms pure and cold?
Frail gifts from nature’s half-reluctant hand
I see the signs of Spring about the land.
These chill snowdrops, fresh from wintery bowers
Are the forerunners of a world of flowers’
Sarah Doudney
‘There is always in February, some one day, when one smells
the yet distant, but surely coming, summer’
Gertrude Jeykll
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And finally...........
February is the shortest month, so if you’re having a miserable month, try to schedule it for February!
