Reveley Lodge Gardeners page

Reveley Lodge Garden December 2011

During most of the past two months many of the garden volunteers have been working in the house. After much delay the electrical work to the ground floor was completed by the first week in October. Clearing the rooms had been a huge physical effort completed in a hurry. Putting everything back in its correct place took much longer. Fortunately with computerised digital photography, identifying and finding furniture and boxes of items became a sort of simplified treasure hunt. Things had been stacked anywhere, upstairs, in the stable or the workshop.

Cleaning was another matter because taking up floor boards had made a lot of dust. Fortunately Judy Bentley was able to start work again and put in extra days. Also we have recently welcomed Dianne Payne, a new volunteer to the house team and committee. Dianne is much valued for her hard work and computer skills interpreting room contents.

The harvesters and florists continue to provide for the Thursday run to the Museum. The glut of beetroot has now given way to a glut of onions. The weather will soon turn cold, so think of warming onion soup.

The garden has looked very beautiful with autumnal colours and the planted tubs on the terrace have been the most spectacular that I can remember. The climbing plants in the conservatory have been taken out of the beds. In future all plants will be in pots to prevent damage and damp to the house walls. Keith has painted the walls gleaming white ready for their return. The lawns have been scarified resulting in a pile of moss the size of a small haystack. By the time you read this Nick and Alan will have spread three 'dumpy bags' of fertilizer on the lawns.

There have been some escapes from house duties to trim the strawberries, take down the beans and battle with ivy invading the trees. This brings me to the long neglected car park and Frobisher Studio area at the Museum. We had taken our eye off the ball for eighteen months and it was in a sorry state. Ivy and buddleia had taken over walls and roof, weeds had flourished and litter collected everywhere. It took Nick and a handful of volunteers a morning on the last day in October to make it look neat again. However the ivy is an on-going problem.

I realise that I forgot in the last edition to tell you that once again we were not successful in winning the Peter Wyatt Challenge at the Bushey Show; beaten yet again by one mark by Hemel Hempstead. It seems that dahlias are our downfall; we either don't display them properly, or we display them correctly but the variety chosen should be larger in diameter. I'm starting to dislike them! Although spectacular they don't last as cut flowers nearly as well as the late flowering chrysanthemums. Nor do they have a perfume. Our special chrysanthemums from Judy Barker's National Collection in London Colney are flourishing. Recently Judy supplied 90% of these varieties for the trials at RHS Wisley. We are very lucky to have a few of them at Reveley.

Madeleine McCormack