Head Gardener's Blog: A Year at Riverhill
I would like to firstly thank all our visitors for their support of the gardens this season. This year has been very special for me – my first at Riverhill.
I really enjoyed getting to know my colleagues, our wonderful volunteers and, of course, the gardens themselves.
For a horticulturist, Riverhill offers a wide variety of tasks – we have an amazing woody plant collection in the Wood Garden, highly specialised fern collection in the Rock Garden, herbaceous and vegetable plants in the Walled Garden and grass meadows at the View Point, to just name a few.
This means that I get to use the wide range of skills I gained from my training in horticulture and arboriculture. From hedge cutting, mowing and tree pruning to herbaceous border maintenance, seed propagation, vegetable growing and container display. It is a dream garden for me because it is so varied and allows me to keep learning and challenging myself.
Throughout the Summer, we all enjoyed the sculpture trail beautifully installed by Everard Read gallery. The pieces complimented our landscape very well and added another layer of interest to the garden.
Protective Hare by Guy Du Toit replaced our iconic ‘silver ball’ by Julian Wild this summer
However, this summer was not all positive. We had a long spell of hot, dry weather, followed by an eventual hose pipe ban. The team had to spend a lot of time watering and worrying about the health and, sometimes, lives of our plants. I braced myself for a lot of casualties, but I was pleasantly reminded of how resilient plants are. The majority pulled through and tried to store as much energy as possible for the next year. Some plants benefited from the high temperature and exhibited amazing autumn colours. But unfortunately, overall, the autumn colour display this year was less than average.
Left image: Brilliant colour on a cherry tree, albeit short lived. Right image: Japanese maple colours came on rather haphazardly.
In the middle of August, Riverhill was invited to be featured on BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Gardener’s Question Time’. It was their ‘Postbag’ episode, in which the presenter and a panel of garden experts visit a garden and answer questions from the letters and emails sent in by the public.
The recording happened on the September 13th, under a soggy autumn sky which, to my relief, gradually improved. I was a little nervous but ended up having a lot of fun with the lovely producer ,Dom Tyerman, presenter Peter Gibbs, and the panel - Danny Clarke, James Wong and Pippa Greenwood.
If you missed the episode, it is still available on their website and on BBC sounds so please have a listen!
Gardener’s Question Time recording in the Rock Garden
Our season finished with our last, but not at all least, event – the Pumpkin Festival. A lot of effort goes in to prepare and run this popular event and this year was no exception. The beautiful displays, pumpkin trail and pumpkin carving activity were ever so popular, coinciding with schools’ half term holiday.
Hats off to our shop manager Angela who curates the festival, and the whole team of Riverhill for another successful finale for the season.
Left image: Pumpkins and Riverhill view Right image: I also had a chance to create a harvest display by the Potager
Now, quite a few people ask us what we do in winter – take it easy? …. Not at all! Winter is actually quite a busy time for us. We often say ‘We do gardening in winter and do maintenance in summer’.
A lot of big jobs happen in winter, such as pruning and mulching. We basically ’shape’ the next year’s display in winter and ‘tweak’ it in growing season. We also try to take advantage of the garden not being open to the public to do things like path upgrades and tree felling / pruning.
We have already started on my next big improvement plan – refining and nurturing the woody plant collection in the Wood Garden.
This is only the beginning of our winter time and I am already looking forward to welcoming you back to the gardens in spring 2023!
Misako
Tree work carried out in order to give this young monkey puzzle tree more space to spread