Thursday 20 January 2011

Housebound Gardener!

Just a quickie post this time around as I jump onto my blog for a few minutes. I'm basically stuck in the house because our little one isn't well enough to go to nursery, & its my turn to stay in & play nurse. We've had some nice cuddles this morn, & I've been building towers with play bricks to entertain my patient, but frustration isn't far away because of the glorious January sun & blue skies that are all around. I could have got so much done today!

Ah well, in lieu of a 'proper' blog post, I thought I'd add a couple of photo's from my busy day yesterday at Compton Verney.

We are continuing to prepare for the re-planting of an avenue which existed in the parkland. I had a fascinating morning yesterday with a surveyor, & we set out all the tree positions for two of the avenue rows. The morning mostly consisted of me marching & running about a field with a prism, stakes & mallet, being guided by the surveyor. He was spot on with his calculations, which made for a swift job of it, but for much of the time we were so far apart that it was all my frozen fingers could do to answer the mobile to get directions - "2 feet forward, 10cm to your left, back a touch etc etc!
Next job is to get digging & planting, & for this we're enlisting some help from Warwickshire College, who will be bringing some students to help with the process. Can't wait to get stuck in!

The original avenue was of Elm, & was a double row that sat nicely in a distant field in the landscape. Its purpose was to pick up the eye, & draw it through to.......well this is where we're unsure, it basically ended on the horizon, & that's that! Whilst thinking out loud, there could be a connection with an ornamental farm building which is positioned on the horizon, just to left of avenue. Maybe, Capability Brown was trying to produce a distant vision of rural life? Who knows... What we do know is that the re-planting will form a connection between a distant field & the main grounds afore the mansion, indeed, the avenue is aligned with the front doors & drive to the house.



       For the second half of yesterday I mostly moved freshly cut timber, which wasn't that fascinating, but I did nip over to have a closer look at the Winter Aconites ( Eranthis Hymalis ) I've been tweeting about lately. They are in full bloom now, & look stunning beneath the towering Lime trees, believed to be from around time Capability Brown landscaped the grounds. I've added a couple of photographs below, taken on my phone, so do forgive the average quality. The grounds & gallery don't re-open until the end of March, so I hope the photo's go some way to show that whilst Compton Verney is closed, the grounds live on!

I hope you enjoy the photo's, & I do hope your garden is beginning to wake up, little by little, from it's winter rest. Snowdrops coming soon!  Happy Gardening, Gary.

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