Category: logs

Snowdrops and Creative Pruning – Ivy Croft Garden

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date June 28, 2018
3 Comments on Snowdrops and Creative Pruning – Ivy Croft Garden

I often publish posts about summer days out in winter to help us warm up so as we are in the middle of an exceptionally hot period of weather I shall do the opposite and publish this post I wrote in the winter in the hope it may cool us down!

There were two main reasons we wanted to visit Ivy Croft Garden and Nursery to look at, firstly their huge collection of snowdrops and secondly their imaginative pruning techniques. Both these elements are highlights of the February garden. We drove down to Herefordshire with gardening friends Pete and Sherlie who had never visited the garden before. We had been once before several years ago, when it was still quite early on in the development stage. We were looking forward to seeing what it was like after so many years.

The garden which was started in 1997, surrounds the cottage which has a formal area close to the house partly enclosed by an ivy hedge. Further afield the garden becomes less formal and a wander around gave us the chance to look at its pond, willow and dogwood collections, a perry pear orchard and a vegetable garden enclosed with trained fruit trees.

The area around the house featured many flowering bulbs and in the spring and summer alpines would take over. A colourful Acer griseum stood with two variegated Hollies in a circular bed surrounded by a gravel pathway.

The pruned features we discovered as we parked up included a pleached limes, box balls and all were neatly presented.

An amazing selection of ivies made up the ivy hedge which surround two sides of the formal garden around the cottage. It was a beautiful, unusual feature to welcome visitors.

The huge work shed had a unique humorous tough, buttresses created by training and pruning yew trees. Close by stood this beautiful white barked birch tree.

As we walked away from the pleached limes and box ball topiary, we wandered through the wide selection of rare and unusual snowdrops. Beyond this border was a trellis-like “fedge”, a living hedge made from willow.

Shrubs with coloured stems and trees with coloured bark are strong features of the winter garden, and Ivycroft had some fine examples of both. Coloured stems were provided by Salix and Cornus, whereas the coloured bark appeared on Betulas and Prunus.

Little details reward those who take a closer look, a catkin, a flower or an old seed pod.

As mentioned earlier Snowdrops were a special feature of the gardens at Ivy Croft, but we also enjoyed cyclamen, miniature daffodils and hellebores. Colours shone from shrubs too, Hamamelis, Daphne mezereum and Hedera helix in its shrubby form.

We certainly had plenty to enjoy at Ivy Croft and it had changed so much since our last visit over 10 years ago. We will certainly be visiting once again when it opens again for a day in the spring.

Tags cornus, dogwoods, flowering bulbs, gardens of Herefordshire, Herefordshire, Herefordshire gardens, hollies, log piles, pleached limes, pleaching, salix, snowdrops, spring bulbs, topiary., willow

autumn colours climbing plants colours flowering bulbs garden design garden photography garden wildlife gardening gardens half-hardy perennials hardy perennials irises light light quality log piles logs natural pest control ornamental trees and shrubs roses Shrewsbury Shropshire shrubs South Shropshire spring bulbs succulents trees

My Garden Journal 2017 – November

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date December 7, 2017
2 Comments on My Garden Journal 2017 – November

The penultimate visit to my garden journal for 2017 is here – hope you enjoy it. I began by referring back to a development we started in the garden back in September which we finished off in November. We are very pleased with how it has turned out and look forward to seeing the new plants flourish.

“October continued with damaging winds and days with brown skies and orange sun as we received the effects f Hurricane Ophelia, downgraded to Storm Ophelia as it hit our shores. The last few weeks of October and the early days of November, saw us busy continuing develop our “Oil Tank Garden”.

“We screened the ugly tank with panels of beautiful diamond latticed panels and soon got on with the planting. Always the exciting bit!”

Over the page I continue to describe our development of this border and wrote “Behind the tank we have planted two trees, the Heptacodium mentioned in September and a stunning Sorbus called Joseph Rock with yellow berries in stark contrast to its deepest red autumn foliage.

“Hundreds of miniature daffodils were planted with crocus, Anemone blanda and other small bulbs.”

“A new solitary bee home was sited in the new garden. We gave it a miniature green roof!”

“We soon had a selection of climbers planted to clothe the trellis panels, Roses, Clematis, Honeysuckle and a Coronilla”.

“Behind the tank we planted for wildlife and hedgehogs in particular. We placed a nestbox for hedgehogs among dense planting of ferns and Euphorbias. We added stone piles, leaf piles and log piles.”

Turning over another page I featured some words by Dan Pearson and looked at some autumn flowering plants.

“Taking a look at Dan Pearson’s writings about Autumn in his “Natural Selections” book he wrote,

I want to invite the seasons into the garden, vividly and in layers. I use asters, autumn crocus and gentians at ground level, and shrubs that perform for this season to take the eye up and away, to straighten the back. I weave berrying trees and shrubs into the garden as much for their jewel-like fruit as for the birds which flock down to gorge when the fruit is ready for feasting upon.”

We aim to do exactly the same in our Avocet patch. Below are a few of our Asters which feature in our “Shrub Border”, a border that brings Autumn in.”

“Another herbaceous perennial that features strongly in our November garden are the Salvias. We leave a few to over-winter in the garden but most will be brought into the cool greenhouse.”

Turning over again I take a look at succulents, plants rarely mentioned in the context of the autumn garden.

“When considering Autumn colour, succulents are rarely mentioned, but just check out the photos below of some of our succulents taken in November“

Below are my paintings/drawings of two multi-coloured succulent stems which I created with water soluble pencil crayons.

“Taking succulent cuttings.”

“Final pots of succulents waiting to go into their winter home.”

The final page of my November entries in the Garden Journal celebrates my “Plant of the Month”, which is one of only two Irises native to the UK, Iris foetidissima.

The next visit to look at my Garden Journal in 2017 will be the last one for the year, December.

Tags autumn, autumn colours, clematis, climbing plants, garden photography, garden wildlife, gardening, NGS, ornamental grasses, ornamental trees, roses, salvias, shrubs, spring bulbs, succulents, trees, wildlife

colours flowering bulbs garden design garden photography garden ponds garden pools garden wildlife gardening hardy perennials log piles logs National Garden Scheme natural pest control NGS ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture sculpture spring bulbs spring gardening village gardens water garden water in the garden wildlife woodland Yellow Book Gardens

Celebrating the Glory of Spring – the garden at a cottage called Cartref

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date September 5, 2017
1 Comment on Celebrating the Glory of Spring – the garden at a cottage called Cartref

I thought I would look back at a visit we made with friends, Pete and Sherlie in the spring to a garden called Cartref. It was a “pop up” NGS garden which is a garden that opens unplanned but that looks good so the owner wants to share it with other NGS, National Garden Scheme, visitors. It is a way of seeing gardens at their best. It is a new idea so we look forward to seeing if it continues to happen. We certainly hope so as we visited two this spring and loved them both.

We decided to celebrate the glory of spring by visiting this NGS garden, a one acre modern cottage garden with borders, woodland and ponds. The main features of the garden were the lovely colourful collection of tulips which were at their best when we visited.

Throughout the rest of the garden we found relaxed styles of gardening and in places emphasis on enhancing habitats for wildlife and attracting wildlife into the garden. The wildlife pond had an island reached by a narrow wooden bridge.

After this visit to the cottage garden at Cartref we decided that “pop up” open gardens were definitely a good idea because we felt we had seen Cartref at its best.

Tags April, April garden, NGS, NGS gardens, spring, spring blossom, spring bulbs, spring flowers, spring garden, the garden in April, tulips, Yellow Book, Yellow Book Gardens

log piles logs National Trust outdoor sculpture The National Trust trees woodland woodlands

Tree Trunks at Attingham

On our monthly wanders through the parkland at Attingham Park, the closest National Trust property to us here in Plealey, we spot many dead trees left standing to benefit wildlife, insects and birds in particular. But we simply enj0y their shapes as they decay and the textures created as fungi and small creatures eat them and erode them away.

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We came across a pair of old diseased beech trees both of which had been worked on by tree surgeons. One looked as if it had been made safe to be left for the wildlife of the woods but the other treated in a manner that would save it for years to come.

When we went closer to look at this stump of an old rotting tree we noticed that someone who has passed before us had added a few pieces of wood creating a piece of outdoor sculpture. A surprise for us and other visitors lucky enough to spot it. And a little humour!

Trees that have to be felled when they are in a dangerous place are felled, cut into logs which are stacked to create log piles for wildilfe.

The slow decay and death of trees keeps the woodland changing for ever. They support many forms of wildlife before rotting away beneath the power of fungi to return to the woodland floor adding nutrients and humus to the soil.

Tags Attingham Park, National Trust, The National Trust, trees, woodland, woodlands

autumn autumn colours colours gardens open to the public Land Art light light quality logs National Trust outdoor sculpture photography Shrewsbury Shropshire The National Trust trees woodland woodlands

The Line – a simple tribute to Richard Long

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 21, 2017
1 Comment on The Line – a simple tribute to Richard Long

Jude and I are great fans of land artists and are proud of our British contingency of these sculptors with big ideas. We have sought out pieces around the UK and loved the work of Andy Goldsworthy, David Nash and Richard Long in particular.

Leaving a wooded shaded area and entering a open grassland mown short by the munching mouths of deer and sheep, the sunlight caught the purity of the white fibres of the sheep wool. A simple white line, a reminder of the work of Richard Long.

Richard Long and his landscape art would soon come back to our thoughts and eyes, as we continued our wandering in the woodlands at our local National Trust property with its wonderful parkland, woodland and walled garden, we had to take a detour veering away from our usual routeway. We took a poorly marked diversion beneath open woodland of long stretched trees with narrow trunks and branches way up creating a high canopy.

Some of these trees, although relatively young tend to weaken due to competition from their neighbours simply growing too closely, and then either die off or get blown over by strong winds. On this day in late November the bright sunshine shone so low down that it lit up the felled trunks. Below I share my photograph of a thin silver line lying beneath the narrow black verticals, a broken birch bough beneath living conifers stretching to reach the light.

It put in my mind the work of Richard Long, the part played in his creativity of lines and paths. I took a few shots to put together as a short appreciation of his work.

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sb1-18 The end of the line ………………..

……………………… for now. Soon more broken bright green moss covered fallen boughs cut across our pathway. the richest green cutting through the deeply carpeted dried browns of fallen autumn leaves.

More lines appear before your eyes when you have Richard Long’s work in your mind, the wash left as a white line across the dark surface of the river, the bright line of light vertically drawn down the trunk of an ancient proud tree.

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So our visit to Attingham Park was made even more special and the experience raised even higher by linking it to Richard Long’s creativity. What a surprise!

Tags deciduous trees, land art, lines, National Trust, outdoor sculpture, Richard Long, The National Trust

architecture buildings gardens open to the public landscapes log piles logs National Trust Shrewsbury Shropshire The National Trust

A Walk in the Park – 3 -The WW2 Walk

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 5, 2017
2 Comments on A Walk in the Park – 3 -The WW2 Walk

In readiness for my new monthly visit blog postings for 2017 we have visited Attingham Park our subject for next year a few times during the late autumn and early winter to walk the paths and introduce them to you.

Today it is the turn of the World War II Walk, a walk we had never tried before, so we set off not knowing what to expect.

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During World War Two Attingham Park was the site of an RAF airfield, which was built over existing smallholdings. It began life as an RAF fighter station but during 1942 it was handed over to the USAAF when it was used as a training station for American fighter pilots. It closed in the Autumn of 1946. We were not really sure what to expect so set off full of anticipation.

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We set off on an overcast chilly day for our walk and the weather was to remain dull for the whole walk.

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We first crossed the corner of the Deer Park and made our way alongside ancient dying or dead trees. We were pleased to see that plenty of new young trees have been planted to replace them. The old trees were left after they had died to become valuable wildlife haunts from woodpeckers to beetles to myriads of micro-organisms. This is a healthy way to manage woodland and parkland. Fallen wood has been left where it dropped or piled up to create wildlife shelter and food. A local beekeeper has established a good colony of bees with several sorts of colourful hives set alongside the woodland fenceline.

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Jude the Undergardener and I are both very imaginative and love looking for shapes in clouds, flames and here within the shapes of fallen rotting wood. The tree trunk in the photo below reminded us of a Komodo Dragon!

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We love the textures in rotting tree wood – the patterns, lines and colours creating works of art.

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We wandered along a woodland path beneath dark tall conifers, the path soft beneath our feet made from chipped bark and topped with a layer of pine needles.

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Site Number 10 is where we found the evidence of the Atcham Airfield, ruins of barrack huts, officers’ quarters and latrines. To begin with an odd brick or two then signs of an old wall and then even the ruins of a building.

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After experiencing the discovery of the ruins of the airfield complex, we left the artifacts behind us and made our way back through the deer park towards the hall.

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We will no doubt re-visit this walk and its WW2 ruins during our monthly visits in 2017.

Tags Attingham Park, NT, parkland, Shropshire, The National Trust, world war, world war 2

gardens open to the public log piles logs National Trust outdoor sculpture sculpture Shropshire The National Trust trees woodland woodlands

Getting Creative in the Woodlands

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date December 9, 2015
2 Comments on Getting Creative in the Woodlands

In my last post we looked at what we discovered was going on in the old Walled Garden at Attinham Park and I finished just as we left the walled garden behind and began wandering around the woodlands.

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So here is the second part of our Attingham Park autumn adventure.

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When taking a wander along the woodland trails at our local National Trust property, Attingham Park, we were amazed to come across this little art installation close to the soft surfaced woodchip path. Woodlands are like the seashore as they often seem to bring out creativity in people, perhaps even a return to making things which was last enjoyed in childhood. At the sea people often pile up pebbles to make simple sculptures, collect together mixed objects from the surf line and carefully put them together. This simple little piece sits beautifully in its surroundings and stopped many people walking by to have a closer look. No-one touched it, but simply looked, smiled, made a comment to their companions and walked on. It is a beautiful piece of sculpture, made anonymously and left for others to enjoy.

We wandered on into the woods along winding paths beneath towering trees above while at our feet the orange, yellows and reds of fallen leaves. Fallen leaves always bring the children out in Jude and I and we kicked our feet through them, enjoying the sounds and woody aromas.

The woodsmen who had been working on autumnal maintenance work left behind them little blocks and wedges of wood. Following on from the piece of found object sculpture we discovered and enjoyed earlier we both started to follow their initiative and got creative. The stumps left behind gave us ready-made plinths to work on.

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We collected bits and pieces of wood left by the woodsman or by Mother Nature and made various compositions on top of our wooden stump plinths. We couldn’t stop smiling as we played with the wood and loved the wonderful sweet aroma of fresh cut wood and leafmould. An outdoor studio! What a treat!

As we completed each set we wandered on. Looking back through the trees we spotted other walkers stopping and taking photos of what we had left for them to enjoy, just as we had when we found that piece close to the walled garden.

Moving further into the woodland the woodsmen had left areas cleared for coppicing, leaving multi-stemmed trees cut low to encourage regrowth. They reminded me of sculpture by Barbara Hepworth which are exhibited among trees at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

I found slithers, slices and wedges of freshly cut wood and placed them among the stumps.

Logs had been piled up to create habitats for wildlife winding wooden walls through the trees. The aroma here was of rotting wood, dampness and fungi.

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A huge old tree trunk felled years ago and left to rot providing shelter, food and homes for wildlife, had been sculpted by the weather, rain, wind, ice and snow, worked upon by insects, invertebrates and fungi to present us with a beautiful softly carved piece of Mother Nature’s sculpture.

We loved finding this nest box beautifully and thoughtfully positioned on top of a rotting tree stump. We shall watch this in the spring to see if any birds like it as much as we did.

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As we left the woodland we moved into the deer park where trees were much further apart separated by tracts of bright green grass. Here fallen branches, trunks and brash had been left for children to make dens from. Another form of sculpture created by youngsters using wood from the surrounding trees. The dens had their own beauty and naivety. Each time we visit Attingham these dens change, new ones appear, the oldest begin to fall apart and some just seem to get bigger and bigger. Well done to the National Trust for encouraging such creativity for the visiting youngsters and for affording them the opportunity to get in touch with nature.

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I hope you have enjoyed sharing our spell of creativity in the woodlands at Attingham Park. When we next visit it will be interesting to see if any of our pieces remain intact after the winter storms and to discover how the children’s dens have been transformed by nature or by other children.

Tags Attingham Park, creativity, den building, dens, natural sculpture, outdoor sculpture, parkland, sculpture, Shropshire, The National Trust, wood, woodland, woodland walks, woodlands

community gardening garden buildings garden design garden ponds garden pools garden seating garden wildlife gardening gardens gardens open to the public Land Art log piles logs National Trust nature reserves outdoor sculpture The National Trust trees water in the garden wildlife woodland

An Interest Trail for Children – Dunham Massey

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date June 25, 2014
2 Comments on An Interest Trail for Children – Dunham Massey

We have created an “Interest Trail” around our allotment community garden, and we see it performing two roles, firstly it guides all our visitors around the site taking in as big a variety of features as possible and secondly it performs as an activity trail for children. It has proved very popular. Whenever we come across a similar trail in large gardens or parks we always have a look to see how the idea has been executed. We visited the National Trust garden, Dunham Abbey, primarily to enjoy the Winter Garden but we discovered that since our last visit a few years ago a couple of the gardeners have created a children’s trail so we could not resist trying it out.

It was wonderful! Come with us and enjoy! We found the sign and below it one of the decorated bikes and then enjoyed a woodland wander before discovering the first of many fun and educational features designed for children.

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Any child who is brought here is very lucky indeed! At our allotment we also have features and arrange activities for the children and grandchildren of our members and their friends so we left with many new ideas.

Tags Cambridge, children and gardens, gardening for children, log piles, nature trails, woodland

landscapes light quality log piles logs

Take Two

Recently I published a post about one tree, today I follow up with a post about two logs. Of course they are from Silver Birch trees, my favourite trees. When we have our log supply for the winter delivered the birch logs always look so colourful and full of textures. These two started getting more colourful and as the bark dried and peeled the textures got more interesting.

So I popped them down on the back lawn and took these shots. Please enjoy! You just have to like the curly bits! Look closely and you will find landscapes in miniature brought out by the bright sunlight.