Head Gardener's Blog: The Maze
It’s not just the maze that needs a post lock down hair cut!
“It has been a few months since my first blog and much has happened in the garden. Disappointingly, the spring bulbs, rhododendrons, azaleas and the many spring flowering plants we have, have done their thing without any audience this year. Fortunately the gardens have opened just in time for visitors to see the wonderful display of peonies in the Walled Garden. The roses on the Rose Walk are just about to pop and the ferns in the Rock Garden have fully unfurled their finely cut fronds.”
Another area of the gardens that visitors, certainly the younger ones, are enjoying is the maze. The maze was originally planted in 2010 using Taxus baccata (Yew). However over the couple of years that followed a large number of the trees struggled and when they died they were replaced with Carpinus betulus (Hornbeam) which would tolerate the thin soil of the viewpoint field better.
Fig. 1 is how I first saw the maze, the photo was taken in January 2017, when I started as Head Gardener at Riverhill. When I took on the role I was told that “The maze has to work”. With that fresh in my ears, that spring we replaced a couple of hundred dead or struggling Yews, removed all the weeds and grass and mulched around the base of all the trees. The following year we replaced another hundred. Finally in 2019 we got to the situation where no replacements were needed and mulched once more. During this period we as a team made sure there were no weeds in the maze to ensure there was no competition for water or nutrients for the trees. Also irrigation was needed during extremely dry spells. I would estimate that in the 10 years since the maze was originally planted that at least 80% of the Yew trees have been replaced with Hornbeam.
Fig 2. The maze as it is today.
fig 1. The beginnings
Fig. 2 is the maze as it looks today; I would hope you would agree that it looks more like a maze and more of a challenge to navigate your way around.
This week sees the maze’s first cut of the year. Hornbeams put on a remarkable amount of growth during the spring and therefore, in order to ensure safe passage through the maze for all our visitors, we always cut the hedges in June. The hedges do get a second cut in the early Winter to make sure they are tidy for the next year.
Cutting the hedges is not a small job, in fact an ever increasing job year on year. Having just finished this year's summer cut I can tell you it has taken three days (half a day more than last year) of non stop cutting and many hours of raking up!
It’s all so worth it though, especially when you see it from above, I hope you enjoy this amazing drone footage, shot for us by ITV news Meridian.