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Our Cottage Garden

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Spring 2010
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 This garden is inspired by Mr. Alan Furness-Huson, a man who has guided my faltering steps into the wonderful world of gardening.

Thank you for visiting out website.

These pages, or blog, were updated July 2010.

This garden will open as part of the National Garden Scheme on Sunday the 26th of June 2011 at 2pm!

Spring at Holmcroft in its full glory.
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The new kid on the block!
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Cupid comes to live at Holmcroft

A reindeer, left behind by Santa - obviously- has found its way into the garden and frightened the dog!  I was told that there should always be something in your garden that makes you smile and in our case it is Cupid.  Made by a local tree surgeon with the fee being donated to charity, we think he is rather good.

After two consecutive years as a semi-finalist in The Shropshire Star Garden of The Year Competition we became finalist for 2008, the 25th year of the competition's life!
The final judging took place on the 1st of August 2008.  A very proud Head Gardener shows Mr Roy Lancaster around Holmcroft. The final placings 1,2,3rd were announced at The Shrewsbury Show on the 16th of August.  We achieved 3rd place.

My BIG moment!
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The head gardener with Roy Lancaster.

Felt more than a little silly as this photo was being taken.  The judging was over in a flash and after all the hard work to get everything ready the under gardener and I just sat like a pair of zombies after they had all left!

Prepared for Judging!
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Weather behaving for a change1

The night before the judging and not a leaf out of place.  The Dobie who normally has the run of the garden was confined to barracks!  The Under Gardener had worked his magic on the lawn edges and the first thing Mr. Lancaster commented on was the colour of the lawn.  Did I tell you that the Under Gardener had all but killed off the lawn three weeks earlier, overdosed it on lawn sand and turned the whole thing black !!!!

Competition Photo
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This is one of three pictures which were submitted to the Shropshire Star for the competition.  Despite being sent recorded delivery they never arrived and we had to e-mail them through on the closing day of the competition!

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Described by one visitor as "a chocolate box cottage" we became the owners of this piece of English history in May 2004

The panels at the front of the cottage bowed outwards when we arrived.  The Under Gardener spent an entire summer stripping each section back to the wattle.  Scared me witless to see what had been hidden for over 350 years.  After treating the timbers he replaced everything with lime mortar, which is a long and painstaking job.  After each panel was finished it was left to dry and then painted white.  Each panel took a month each to restore but the end product is going to last for many years to come.

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The newly competed north front refurbishment, December frost 2006.

This makes me feel cold just looking at it!  I planted wall flowers our first winter with forget me not and Queen of the Night tulips.  The wall flowers were totally demolished by the bunnies.  The Doberman was not doing her job.  Now I put in pansy and forget me not, the little fluffy jobs do not seem to like either of them!  Hosta plants fill these beds in summer and a close eye has to be kept on them as they are coming up.  The snails hide most effectively in the forget me not and then they will munch through the newly emerging Hosta leaves.  I have found that a garlic wash used on the leaves does the trick.  The only downside is that you have to re-apply after it has rained.

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The Willow Tree in September

When we arrive here in 2004 this willow tree was in some distress.  It was shedding its leaves even in May.  We had a specialist look at the tree and he confirmed that it was in trouble.  Pollard the tree was the suggestion and that happened in February 2005 and just look at it now!  The tree sits at the top of the steep bank which is front of the cottage and it is the centre piece of the refurbishment of that bank.    The two stone pots were added in 07.  There had been similar pots here some 30 or so years ago but they had been removed by a previous owner.  These were a "snip" at a local auction and have been planted up as you can see with geraniums.  There are plastic pots inside the stone one and they are changed three times a year so as to keep the planting looking fresh. To age the pots when we got them I painted them with cow manure.  Very messy but it worked.

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The under gardener at work.

The under gardener said, when we came here, one of the most important aspects of this garden would be the ability to process everything that we removed from the garden.  To this end he set about purchasing the equipment necessary to quickly compost down all that we take out of the garden.  Here you see the two different kinds of shredders we use as well as the Hippo bag I put everything into till we have time to process it.  This job is done about once a week at the change over period of each of the planting successions.  The finely chopped material is then added to one of the many compost bins that we have.

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Pride & Joy for the under gardener - compost!

As you can see we have many bins and they are all in use all the time. It never ceases to amaze me how it all rots down and ends up being a relatively small amount compared with what we take out of the garden. What is slightly out of shot here is the leaf bin.  This is regularly turned out and added to the other bins when it has rotted down.  The "tin man" as I call him disposes of the nasties such as leaf with black spot and bind weed.  Some of the rubbish is considered by the under gardener as not suitable for HIS compost bins so finds its way to the local tip.

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Here we have the pristine driveway to nowhere, to be turned into a gravel garde!

To add extra interest the under gardener suggested a gravel garden.  He felt that this drive way was not used for vehicles and was rather wide for just a path.  We set about, or rather I set about digging holes into the drive with a mattock and planting some plants we had going spare.  Then we waited to see if they would survive.  I had read about Beth Chatto's gravel garden and employed the same method of planting.  Big hole, lots of compost and then leave them to it.  When it appeared it would be OK I ordered more plants from the Beth Chatto website.  All of them were chosen with care to survive in the conditions they found themselves in.  We had one fatality during the winter.  Some of them needed covering for the first few months so they had plastic buckets and containers over them.  Some of these were black and some were white.  The whole effect was to look as though some bizarre chess game was going on!

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Dobie checks out the goings on.

The very day the Under Gardener suggested a gravel garden I set to work.  It is always a very successful part of the garden on our NGS day.  One of the big benefits of the gravel garden is that it provides a large amount of self set plants that I tease out of the ground and then pot on. I just love getting plants for free.

The Gravel Garden
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The gravel garden was much commended by Roy Lancaster when he judged the garden for the Shropshire Star "Garden of the year" competition.  It has made quite an impact with many of our visitors and is the area of the garden that generates the most questions. It is continuing to mature very well and I am adding extra plants for summer 2010.

High Summer 2007
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A view of part of the gravel garden looking towards the long boarders.

This lovely tree you see in the centre of the picture has in the last two years become very sick.  According to the RHS the problem is with the wet summers we have had, and it is not a very long lived genus.  There are three such trees in the village and they are all dying off.   We had removed some of the dead stems and found that they were totally waterlogged and it has looked increasingly poorly sick during the summer of 09.   The latest is that at the end of January 2010 it was taken down as it is now officially deceased. I did a good deal of research to find a suitable replacement for this summer's opening, and Betula Snow Queen is now in place.

What a sad sight.
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January 2010 and the tree is gone.

I know it is winter but even so this is a sad sight.  All signs of the Robinia 'Frisia' tree have gone now and we are awaiting our new tree to be delivered very soon.  One of the things I remember about our first ever visit to the cottage was this tree and it is going to be missed but I feel confident that our new tree will soon become established.

Holmcroft in the 1970's
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This picture was given to us by the nephew of the owner of the cottage for fifty years.  We have an aerial picture taken only two years ago and it is already way out of date.  I love this picture and have spent a long time pouring over it.  Recently we had three people here who were evacuated to this part of the world during the war and they stayed in the cottage.  They were able to tell us a good deal about the garden then and filled in some of the blanks for us!

Holmcroft at Christmas
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The dining room

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caroleandmike@anenglishcottageonline.com

a passion for a cottage and a  garden