Winter Garden Maintenance: Essential Tasks for Our Garden@19

Winter is a time when I try to carry out as many of what I call ‘estate maintenance ‘ in the garden. There always are posts that rot off, trellis or fencing falling apart.

New fence

This year the fence panels in the White and Green garden needed replacing. I can not complain they have lasted 20 years. The Clematis mon. Alba which covered it during this time and has been holding it up for a couple of years, but it has now died so the decision has been made for me.

I have replaced the clematis with the climbing Hydrangea anomala subsp. Petiolaris which should be happy on this north-facing fence. In the corner is a new Cornus kousa ‘China Girl’ a beautiful flowering shrub. It will require a year or two to lose its new look.

New Gate.

Previous readers of my posts will know we have badgers visiting the garden. They are capable of doing a lot of damage to a garden, I am however fortunate that they follow a regular path so to ensure they stay on it I have gates that I close at night which prevents access to other areas of the garden. The one that enters the Blue Border was falling apart so one of the estate maintenance jobs was to replace it this winter. I decided to use the same design as the one I added to the badger path entrance last year,

the only difference was this one was painted blue.

Coppicing a Tree.

The silver birch in the garden was in danger of becoming too big for the area. It is a beautiful addition to the garden but not wishing to incur a large tree surgeon bill in the future I decided to cut it down with a view to coppicing it in the future. I hope it will regrow from its base providing two or three new shoots which will be easy to manage with only requiring cutting back every few years.

Coppicing is a traditional method of managing an area of woodland, hazel for making hurdles, chestnut for fencing and willow for basket making. Historically furniture especially chairs were made in these areas all using just hand tools. Those doing this work were called ‘Bodgers’ it meant Bodging as in chair bodgering, not as today doing a ‘bodge job’.

It is also how timber for charcoal is produced. It is said that by periodically clearing an area of woodland it lets in light which helps to increase the range of wildlife and plants to appear, then insects which provide food for the birds.

I do find it an interesting area of woodland management.

A Sad January.

I started to write this post in early January, sadly my gardening partner of over 50 years, Irene, passed away at the end of January, so it has taken some time before I could finish the post.