The Focus for the Garden in January

The roses are still being trained! With the backbone of the garden revolving around roses, this task is ongoing. However, the climbing and rambling roses adorning the walls and wires should be completed by the end of the month. This includes the roses scaling the Estate Office and the interior courtyard of the Hall itself. But that won’t be the end of the roses…
Next, we’ll focus on the Rose Garden, where we have many shrub roses to tackle, alongside the bed work—cutting back perennials, thinning out self-seeders, and editing where necessary.

In other parts of the garden, we have finally finished planting our 18,000 bulbs. This is usually completed by Christmas, but due to the milder autumn and early winter, along with the challenges posed by the Illuminated Garden Trail, we had to postpone some of the planting until early January. To protect some of our pot displays, we lay narrow-gauge chicken wire over the tops and secure it with bricks to prevent rats, squirrels, voles, and mice from disturbing them.

Working through the borders is another ever-present task for us in January. We are slowly cutting back, editing, weeding, and tweaking the borders as we go, working off wooden boards to avoid compacting and disturbing the soil unnecessarily—much to the annoyance of the robins, whose expectation of disturbance goes unfulfilled.

Seeds and dahlias will be audited this month in preparation for this year’s order. We tend to order new dahlias each year, both to refresh our collection and to replace any that didn’t perform as hoped. By the end of January, we like to have our lists ready and the ordering underway. The longer you leave it, the more likely it is that the plants you want won’t be available.

The glasshouse will be cleaned, albeit a bit late, but in preparation for the spring rush. Leaks will be addressed, and the remaining tidying will be completed throughout.

Hygiene is particularly important at this time of year, as plants are not growing, and it helps reduce the buildup of pests and diseases. All our pelargoniums are being kept very dry to reduce the risk of botrytis, and they have been cut back and defoliated to aid in this process.