Under Water

Yesterday after heavy rains the herbaceous garden has flooded in parts, the worst since moving here nearly 5 years ago . Our usual fast flowing brook rose by about 1m during the day. We also have rivers flowing through the woodland gardens down the slope. During the night the river has risen even further resulting with it bursting its banks into the garden, most of the debris is sand and bark chippings from the seating area on the right, easily cleaned up. It came to within an inch of the gate by the bridge where I store all my seedlings and nursery plants, so I fell very luckly that they were untouched.



The woodland walk which we started last year, we are now attempting to get some more of it finished so the bluebells can be enjoyed in May. The picture on the left is of the clearance we have already completed about 200m into the woods. The leat has been unused for over 50 years, and now has numerous self seeded trees rooted in it, we hope to remove most of these and continue clearing to the sluice gate in the brook. We hope to place a bench in the area of the middle photo to stop and watch the brook, we will have several along the way. The picture on the right is the clearance we still have to do, the bluebells are erupting from the ground already so we're hoping to work on this before we cause too much damage to them. Allowing more light into the banks will hopefully allow more native plants to seed there too. We already have foxgloves, primroses and bluebells.



The early flowering daffodils are in full swing, with primroses, pulmonaria and hellebores creating more colour. Its hard to believe the circle area is less than a year old, its matured wonderfully. The pond area is finished apart from the electrics for the pump and the planting....we've got frogspawn already in the large wildlife area. The higher circle is still under construction, the grass covering it has come from the area to the right where the last bed will be located, this will hopefully be grasses and late flowering perennials. Then the garden will be complete - for now.