Good Gardens Guide

Robert Jamieson at work

 From Robert Jamieson, Head Gardener

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been getting to grips with the casualties of the long, hard and still persistent winter. In Northumberland we’ve seen the most snow for years and a low of -12°C. We’ve been lucky in that none of the special trees or shrubs have suffered too much – the main problem was weight of snow, so we continually went around clearing snow from the branches to stop them from splitting. A couple of rhododendrons tipped over but these have now been put back up and should recover well, as will most of the trees and shrubs. We do appear to have lost most of the osteospermums and diascias, but we always take cuttings of these so have plenty of replacements in the nursery.

  A ray of hope of better things to come are the snowdrops bravely awaiting the melting of the snow in order to give a good show during the rest of February. As they finish flowering at the beginning of March we’ll start to move lots more from the woods down into the main garden – a fiddly job that will keep our four gardeners and sixteen garden volunteers busy for most of the month. We’re closed for the hardest winter months – from the middle of November to the beginning of February – and the break, when we concentrate on planting and tidying, seems to get shorter every year. But by now hardy visitors have returned to meander through the drifts of snowdrops – perhaps it’s the thought of a cup of steaming Earl Grey tea and a piece of home-made cake that encourages them to wrap up and venture out (the gardens, arboretum and tea room are open for the snowdrop walk Wednesday to Sunday, 10.30am to 4pm).

 The garden continues to evolve slowly and peacefully, though as the spring approaches we sometimes find ourselves acting just like swans on a pond – appearing serene and graceful while working frantically behind the scenes to get everything ready on time. Last year we were named 2009 Garden of the Year by BBC Gardens Illustrated and the Garden Museum. It is great to get recognition for the hard work we have put in over the last 26 years to create something that rather than being a quick fix is something that will continue to evolve and develop over many years to come and hopefully will continue to give pleasure to visitors long after we have gone. It has involved us in even more work, however, for one of the reasons for the award was that Howick is ‘a gene bank of material from all over the world… meticulously documented’. So we’ve spent a lot of time in the arboretum this year trying to keep on top of our meticulous documentation – mapping and labelling as well as pruning and tidying ties and guards etc. Even though it has been slow to establish, the arboretum is thriving and we’re often surprised by just how quickly the trees are now growing, especially the Abies densa, which put on about 1m growth each year and produce large purple cones on relatively young trees, and the Chinese pterocaryas, which put on similar amounts of growth and really enjoy the conditions here. And at long last our visitors can now take a pleasant and rewarding one-and-a-half-mile walk all the way down to the sea.