Happy January!

Well, Happy New Year to everyone, if it isn't too late to say that.

This being the UK, we'll start with a traditional comment about the weather, which has been mostly warm and wet all winter.  Looking on the bright side, we're off to a flyer here with our hydro electric plant generating lots of green electricity from the high river flow.

 Earlier this month, Rob and Tom took the opportunity of a dry couple of days to get out and start pruning the wisteria sinensis at the front of the house.  This exercise always takes at least a couple of days, removing last year's racemes and breaking off the dead wood.

With Easter so early (garden visitors arriving!), and winter having been generally so warm, we wanted to get it done before the wisteria decided to get growing again.  These wisterias were some of the first to be planted by Harold Peto when he came to Iford, in 1899, so the oldest of them are well over 100 years old.

The Oriental garden has had its annual clean out.  

- Before -

We drain the pond down to a low level, and remove the leaves which fell over the winter, clear undesirable weed, return any stones which have moved over the season, thin out the box, ferns and other plants to allow room for this year's growth, and generally tidy the place up.

- After -

This is year four of our five-year historic replanting of the garden.  After three years of working on the borders with Alison Jenkins' support and the replacement of Harold Peto's roses with help from Robert Mattock, this will be the "year of the rockery".  

Over the coming months we will try to explain a little of how we are maintaining the rockeries in the garden which are such a useful way of filling in the space, transitioning from area to area or opening up borders without leaving them exposed.

So, here's to 2016.  May we wish you a successful year full of happy gardening and garden visiting!

Summer Round-up

It was a really busy year, and we decided to take the summer off from blogging to allow us to get some other projects underway (details of those to follow). But now we’ll be back to regular updates here on the blog. You may also like to check out our Facebook Page.

Garden Borders

This year has seen the redevelopment of a further set of borders as we continue our four year project to bring the softer, floral elements of Harold Peto’s garden up to the quality which his buildings now deserve.

Working with garden designer Alison Jenkins, the annual border from last year (which was an emergency measure owing to a late winter!) has been replaced by the planned perennial border. And following a prolonged summer, it came into its own bringing colour right through to the end of October.

Next year it should be even better as the hardier, slower growing plants will have established themselves properly.

Iford Arts - Cloister Centenary Season

This year was the 100th Anniversary of Harold Peto’s Cloister, a remarkable building from 1914 in the 12th Century style, which today houses our performances of opera, jazz and other events.

This year the season was entirely Italian in style. Productions included the charming love story of Puccini’s La Rondine, Donizetti’s comedy La Fille du Regiment (reworked brilliantly by Jeff Clarke to be set in a troop of Californian bikers) and an emotionally intense production of Monteverdi’s Ulysses. Keep an eye out for next year’s programme or sign up to the mailing list on the Iford Arts Website.

Wisteria Season - all year!

A most unusually dry, warm summer, ensured that the wisteria flowered not once or twice, but sporadically all through the summer, only losing its last flowers on the First of October.  Who knows whether this will be repeated next year, but we can only hope!

Hydro Plant Update

The downside of a great summer is that there's no water in the river from which to make electricity - so the Hydro Plant has been almost completely dormant for 5 months.  In recent weeks we have got it turning again and now we are back, thankfully, to generating some meaningful power.  We will still probably manage to make this an average year (the first quarter was jolly wet, after all), but it's a relief to have it running nevertheless.

Visitor Numbers

We found ourselves on television earlier in the year, as the garden designer Paul Hervey-Brookes asked the BBC to film his Chelsea Flower Show introduction here, which was very kind of him!  As a result we saw more visitors to the garden in June than in recent years, and a much larger number of 'pilgrims' who had travelled from across the country specifically to visit the garden.  

It is always humbling to be reminded of the meaning and value which people place in the gardens here which we seek to maintain true to Mr Peto's ethos.

Tea Room Success

Iford's Housekeeper, Sarah (The Crafty Housekeeper), made a great impression this year in the tearoom with a new range of cakes and tasty bites.  The Rocky Road was a particular favourite and one member of the family (yours truly) had to start exercising more as a result.

Other Events

Butterfly Day 2014 was a roaring success; various charity walks and sponsored events came through; our tiny caravan site has welcomed a small number of rallies and casual visitors; we hosted three motocross events; it was a busy year on the farm dealing with new cattle housing; we removed our crop of Miscanthus which was under-performing for various reasons; repairs to the cloister became urgent as was suffering some ground instability under one corner; and this morning the 350 runners on the annual "Over the Hills Race" forded the river and ran the half mile up the drive on their 8 mile cross country run.

Roll on the winter!  I wonder what it will bring.

A busy day, planting, casting and mowing

A hive of activity today helped by the warm dry weather.

On the back terraces, Joff and Shane have been casting the concrete foundations for the posts which will hold up the second run of Peto's climbers for our historic reconstruction of his rose garden.  

Rose expert Robert Mattock of www.RobertMattockRoses.com has managed to track down old forms of roses that Peto would have used, based on the the metal plant labels which we have dug up in the borders over the years.  Planting should be taking place at the end of the month - so watch this space (phase 1 on left, below, with phase 2 on next terrace up, to the right)

Rob has been laying down some very smart lines (above, and below) with the mower in the first big cut of the season. The smell is glorious, and the results speak for themselves:

And Shane has also planted out two venerable, old rosemary plants, one garden form (left) and one wild form (right).

It is a challenge to know what to do when a structural element is forcibly taken away from the garden.  The design must adapt for sure, but there are a lot of considerations.  The rockery here has been built following the demise in the winter storms of one of four lime trees, and whilst we wait to see whether there is any residual disease, or other factors, the rockery is a good 'for the time being' solution.

The surrounding wild flowers will fill in the bare patch above the rockery.

Autumn colour - pots, beds and leaves

Alison Jenkins produced some brilliantly colourful borders this year.  Now, with winter approaching, the team has taken the annuals out in preparation for the first of the perennials to be planted.  This is the next phase of our Replanting Scheme which is a three year project to realign the floral element of the garden, to be more in tune with Harold Peto's ethos.

With the warm weather still just about clinging on (although we had a light frosting last night on the top of the hills), we still have some late colour in the garden, and not just from the pots.

  Visitors today were treated to a warm afternoon bathed in beautiful, low autumn sunlight which back-lit the leaves of the great cercidiphyllum...

...and here the Vitis coignetiae which blushes through the old (150-200 year old) yew tree by the conservatory.

 The venerable chestnuts are changing their costumes too, and in a fortnight or so I would expect to see the beech trees above begin to turn and the acers by the cloister to join in the fun.

Summer... catch it while you can

Storms forecast for this week (much needed for the water, but you know what it can do to blossoms...) so don't miss out on the Iford summer colour. 

As readers of the blog will know, we have been undertaking a historic replanting this year which will be a three year project. The border work on the terrace, despite the long winter is really paying off, and Alison Jenkins' terrace scheme looks splendid. This is phase 1, and the rear of the borders here will be done next, with other borders around the garden following. 

 In other news, fans of Wisteria will want to know that there is a 'token' second flowering out in the upper garden, less so at the front of the house.

Rose Garden update

As part of the historic replanting scheme that we are undertaking, Peto's rose garden is being recreated behind the house on the terraces leading to the Spanish patio garden.  Completely new beds  had to be constructed.

 To build strength into the design, and to ensure that the wall below is solid for the next century, we designed concrete plinths and ties to underpin the wooden colonnade support the pillar roses.

Sterilised soil mixed with old horse manure was brought in - something like 10 tonnes in total.

  

Here are the beautiful oak posts before insertion:

 

And here they are in place:

Historic Replant update - filling out...

 Phase 1 of the replant is now filling out with the warmer weather.

Jumping the gap: one electric fence, two borders...

 Our electric fence which repels the rabbits from the newly planted borders met with an untimely accident with a lawn mower this week, severing the fence in two.  It would be insensitive to go into the gory details of the fence's demise whilst the other tools are still in shock.

 This created a problem... how to join two pieces of (now rather shorter) electric fence together to protect two separate areas of border (note gap/lawn above).  And here is the simple solution we came up with.  Indeed it could even be employed by intentionally cutting a fence into two sections I suppose.

 This has been so successful that we are thinking of digging in the wire where it crosses the lawn so we can more easily erect the fence as needed in future years.

Historic Rose Border construction underway

Last time we discussed the terrace area, but an important part of the Iford replant is the border behind the manor where Peto had originally intended a Rose garden.  Working with Robert Mattock we have designed a scheme which will bring some wonderful older forms of roses back to the garden at Iford.  These will run along the left (and in time, the right) of the lawn below.

As the cypress trees have suffered on the terraces (the last one shown in the photo above has now died and been removed, sadly), a rose garden will bring renewed interest to this corner of the garden and help to lead the eye through to the patio garden beyond.

A large laurel is removed from the corner of the patio garden.  It had grown well beyond its appropriate size and was starting to damage the wall below. 

A lot of ground work has to be done because we are on a rather 'mobile' hillside - clay layers within the ground mean that the ground slips slowly and inexorably toward the river - not good for structural walls!

 Hence, these concrete plinths which will form the fixings for the uprights up which the roses will grow.

Keep watching for more updates!

Historic Replant Update

Today was a very important day for the gardens at Iford.  After much planning, deliberating, preparation and waiting (for the weather, mainly), the historic corrective replant has begun.

It is 45 years since Lanning Roper was asked to bring his experience to bear on Iford's gardens which were in need of significant work.  The brief was to produce a long-lasting planting scheme which could be easily maintained whilst providing colour through the summer months.  The legacy of Roper's successful work could be seen in many of the borders at Iford even in recent years.

But times move on and gardens change, as any living thing does.  What remain of Peto's earliest plants are now well over 100 years old.  The garden has evolved, as has the management, as these old forms (cherries in particular) succumb to old age and the planting schemes in the borders are therefore in need of a rethink.

New arrivals in the borders 

We approached Alison Jenkins with a view to redesigning the borders along the main terraces, and she has produced an exciting scheme which we will be implementing over the coming three years.  The key is to use plants which Peto would have had access to during his time here, or any modern form which is the equivalent thereof.  Where this isn't possible, the planting must be in keeping with Peto's critical ethos of balance.  What would he himself have chosen, were he in our shoes today?

“Old buildings or fragments of masonry carry one’s mind back to the past in a way that a garden of flowers only cannot do.  Gardens that are too stony are equally unsatisfactory; it is the combination of the two in just proportion which is the most satisfactory”

 X marks the spot
space is kept back for critical feature shrubs and plants

Over the winter the team has been preparing the borders, and whilst the cold weather has helped to sterilise the ground somewhat, it has held back our schedule for planting.  Today we got underway, and as the season progresses we will enjoy watching the borders as they evolve.