The Test Valley is blessed with woodland, properly managed in a totally sustainable way. This is becoming rare nowadays but management of woodland by skilled coppicing lets light in, allows rare floweres to thrive and is the ideal habitat for butterflies and many other forms of wildlife.
We have reached the Spring equinox, when day and night are of equal level. From this point the growing cycle accelerates. It's important to get ahead of the game. I have new herbs to plant which I am bringing on. The vegetable beds have been prepared, dug over and fed. Large numbers of Foxgloves have been planted to create drifts of towering spires. Herbaceous beds have been cleared, weeded and plants divided and moved. Alliums, hundreds planted since we moved here 4 years ago, are appearing with their dagger shaped leaves stabbing up through the earth - they are a signature plant in this garden and create the early injection of vivid colour in late Spring.
But this weekend has seen me up a ladder with a jet hose blasting the Orchard Room's cedar shingle roof. The whole oak framed structure now looks fresh and almost new. Scarifying the grass and the mowing of all the lawns which surround the house has now also begun. Soon the grass will need feeding too. So begins the momentum - many small tasks that each week will prepare the garden and take us into Spring and beyond.
