Geranium Planting.

Today I spent most of my day in what we call the courtyard although strictly speaking it is actually the old stable yard which long ago would most likely have been home to the horses and carriages.

I started with a general tidy up of the center area which involved the usual weeding forking and edging type thing. I have some Pelargonium Geraniums and an ornamental Banana plant to go in the center bed when the weather warms up. 

To finish off I did a little planting job around the wall bottom. At the far end of this wall there is a Geranium, not the Pelargonium sort that I have for the center bed but the hardy perennial kind. Anyway last Autumn I split it much the same as I did with the crown bud cuttings on the Delphinium except the cuttings were shoots rather than just buds. These have been grown on over winter and are now able to be planted out. As you can see you can soon have a lot of plants from just one mother plant. In fact what you see here is just a fraction of the plant. Since planting these I have taken as many more cuttings again which I intend to use to reduce the spacing between these plants, and there is still quite a big plant left at the end of the wall.

 The frustrating thing for me is that no one ever sees this sort of work or the savings. All anyone ever seems to talk about is grass cutting and the things one doesn't do. It's that time of year where everyone is making comments about lawn mowing as though I have suddenly got something to do after sitting around twiddling my thumbs all winter.

Ivy Trimming In The Courtyard.

Yesterday we managed to get one of the annual jobs in the Courtyard completed. To be honest it was all my own work as the head gardener decided to take a day off after bird feeding duties had been undertaken. Anyway there are places where Ivy is allowed to grow on walls  so every year it needs to be trimmed to keep it under control. I know some people pull faces about Ivy being allowed to grow but I find that provided it's kept under control then it can add something to the look of the place. Just the same as anything else really, if it's allowed to get out of control then it becomes a nuisance. When done every year is an easy enough job of trimming up the face of it with a hedge cutter and then snipping around the outline with a pair of hand pruners. I also use a paint scraper to unstick it from whatever it's growing up.

Below are some before and after pictures of a couple of the main area's tidied up yesterday.

These first two pictures were take from our upstairs window. 

Reclaiming The Steps.

 Today we have been tidying up this little corner of the courtyard. Mainly it involved trimming and removing Ivy from the steps that lead to a loft in the tower. The Ivy had grown part way across the steps and also underneath them so we gave it a good trim and got it back under control.

I used to trim this Ivy once a year but as with the borders I was doing earlier in the week the job got neglected because someone else decided to take over so for a number of years now nothing has been done with it.

After the Ivy trimming we tidied up the little border with the conifers in it which wasn't a big job, it was just a matter of removing a few weeds and trimming a couple of small Box bushes. The head gardener is telling me that it's time to go home, he's had another busy day both with gardening and keeping an eye on his mate Radley. Radley is a West Highland terrier who lives across the courtyard from us and sometimes he runs around the place like a naughty lamb therefore has to be rounded up. So what with watching him and watching me Timothy - Michael has had a busy day.

Tower Cottage Border Work.

 This past couple of days the head gardener and I have been tidying along the wall by Tower Cottage which is in what is known as the Courtyard. The border has been neglected for the past few years because at one point the people who rented the cottage took it over which was fine until they left and the next people never bothered with it so I am going to reclaim it because it's making the place look untidy. So below are some before and after pictures of the work we have done. We also do various other jobs throughout the day as well just in case you are thinking it's not much to show for two days work.

The wall you see in the first picture was completely overgrown with Ivy, we took all this back a few weeks ago so this week all we had to do was the border work. This involved forking out all the weeds, putting a new edge to the lawn and various bits of pruning. Also the tennis ball needed rounding up from time to time.

The head gardener inspecting progress, I think he seems quite pleased with what we've achieved.

There was a Holly bush that had been planted to close to the two shrubs at the far end so I moved that up to this end of the border. 

The head garden is taking a break while I take the pictures.