Not Long Now

Late November to early December is the perfect time to plant Tulips, but you can carry on until mid January, which is just as well, as we still had 350 Tulips bulbs to plant. Joe, Graham and Ali spent the morning in the orchard planting the bulbs in the area where the grass is allowed to grow long in the summer, the hope is to achieve a similar effect as seen on the Nuffield lawn, floating bowls of colour.

Elsewhere in the gardens fresh shoots have started to appear as the temperature rises, a ten degree increase in one week. December may well have been the coldest in 120 years, the average temperature being -0.6c and the chilliest individual month since February 1986, but this week has seen temps move up to 13c to which nature has responded. Snowdrops and Aconites are now emerging at a rapid pace and causing great excitement amongst the gardening team.

You may remember 12 months ago our mammoth Snowdrop planting sessions under the Hornbeam, Beech and Yew trees on the Nuffield lawn, see blog entry 'Snowdrop Day' 25th February 2010, well it won't be long until we see the fruits of our labour all those months ago.