Category: Uncategorised
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Rose pruning
After my rather demoralising experience with the rambling rose, I was looking forward our rose pruning masterclass today. Different types of roses need different pruning regimes to ensure good flowering, and we had a go with the four different types below. In general, when rose pruning, one aims at creating an open centred shrub to…
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More progress in the Cottage Garden
The new path was edged! Woodchips ready for spreading Back from the weekend I found another surprise: my wonderful colleague on duty had edged the new path with wooden boards ready to take woodchips… which my fellow trainee in the arboretum got for me as quick as a flash. Another of my plants, Aronia ‘Viking’…
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The potager in the Cottage Garden
Back from my extended Christmas leave I found a batch of plants waiting for me in the Garden’s reception area (that is where plants accepted into the garden are checked and monitored for pest and diseases). It was the Lonicera nitida for the hedging in my Cottage Garden, donated to the RHS by the lovely…
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Conifers
Conifers. For most of my life I have not considered them much individually: I loved their scent in the air on bright chilly nights when I lived in the mountains in Italy. Then I spent some time among labelled specimens at Kew, and a few things caught my attention: the fresh, aromatic scent they give…
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Spindles
Mature spindles A row of young spindles A kinky leader; on the side, a vertical branch Spindlebushes. A kinky leader at the top, not a permanent one; a layer of branches, slightly above the horizontal at the bottom (not the very bottom, about 75 cm), with a gap in the middle. This shape is widely…
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Apple pruning season
Sizeable canker on an apple tree It’s apple pruning season, and you know why? Because the fruits have gone (so no knocking about) and the leaves are down so you can see the shape of the tree more clearly! Otherwise, apples are pretty tolerant of pruning at any time between leaf fall and bud burst,…
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It’s Christmas time
Christmas is approaching fast, so all the trainees have been invited to help with decorating the glasshouse, while receiving some induction into the process of growing display poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima) and Chrisanthemum spp. Poinsettia Christmas tree It turns out Christmas time starts in March for the display flower grower: that is when one needs to…
About Me
M.Paola Andreoni
I got the first allotment in 2007 (in the UK) and started growing my own food for the first time. Learning as I went along was not enough, so I studied some horticulture. I am striving to abide by organic principles. Brexit gave me a new life in the Netherlands, and two new plots by a nature reserve.
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