Garden Revival

All images ©2021 Notting Hill Nomads

In this region the majority of rain falls early in the year and then the weather stays very hot and dry until Autumn. Unfortunately the gardens and grounds had received very little attention for over six months so we arrived to find the poor plants baked dry and dying, and grass that had grown with unbridled ambition.

There were 12 individual garden areas and grass fields front and back that urgently needed our attention. The race to bring it back to a guest-ready venue was on, even if it was 40 degrees c in the shade. Needless to say this was an exercise in weight loss as much as it was tanning!

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Our first few days were spent on hands and knees weeding the courtyard and watering the box hedging which was clearly struggling. Our sense of accomplishment was short-lived when we noticed the weeds popping back up with renewed vigour only a day or so after we’d thought we’d finished so this became a daily job (with help from the blow torch).

Fee took on the ivy while I tackled the plants in the borders which had dried out and flopped over. After giving them a good soak I strung them up with poles and string to encourage them to return to a more vertical position.

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The front gardens were in quite a state as they receive full afternoon sun so a clearing and resuscitation plan was put into immediate effect.

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In an attempt to promote as much plant growth as possible we rescued any verbena that had self-seeded in paving cracks, and collected seeds from dead poppies. These will be planted by the owner at a later date.

The final frontier for us was taking on the surrounding areas of tall grass. We were able to make use of the owner’s vintage tractor (complete with /cutting deck) and strimmer for this one. It took some time to collect the grass cuttings without a trailer so we fashioned a sort of grass-sled with an old tarpaulin and a climbing rope to speed things up a bit.

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