A walled garden in the Severn Vale in South Gloucestershire dating from the 18th century. Cut flowers, soft fruit, espaliers and orchard trees, sitting in a designed landscape. Gareth & his team were asked to join the long established in-house garden team earlier this year and it has quickly turned into one of our favourite gardens. A 300 year old duck pond,  icehouse, moat and wiggly woodland paths set within an extensive designed landscape make the 3/4 acre walled garden a special place to work.

To-date we have been focusing on routine garden maintenance of the cutting beds featuring an eye catching collection of dahlias. Pruning the trained fruit trees and pruning and weeding the soft fruit garden aswell.

Lifting dahlias over winter? Different gardens, different gardeners all have a personal approach. The old school method of lifting the tubers after the first frosts have hit back the top growth, draining off any water and storing dry and relatively insulated is still good practice. If you have a sheltered garden with free draining soil, leaving the tubers in the ground over winter is an option.  Lifting tubers does give you the oppurtuninty to grow them on in the spring though – producing enough foliage, before planting out, to withstand the inevitable onslaught of voracious slugs. There is the practicality of how many tubers you have to manage; the space and resources to succesfully store them frost free and dormant over winter.

Hill Court as depicted by Kip’s engraving, published in 1712. Below, you can just pick Matt out near the walled garden divide  – he hasn’t moved in 300 years.