Welcome to the month that was April here at Moorfield, and as it ends so too our mild mornings. The frosts are here, growing heavier by the week as the month moved on. I take every moment I can to relish in the remainder of the growing season where I can still see more green than gold, more flowers than seed heads, not that I don’t love autumn, as I do, I think I hear at least a dozen people every season tell me how it is their favourite. It would be mine, after all so much of what I plant is so it can be enjoyed at this time of year and I specifically hunt things down for their autumnal hues but I am a gardener in a cold climate with long winters and have been for the last decade of my life, so spring and early summer will always have just that little bit more of my heart.
In saying that, as April brought more vermilions and russet reds, and eye watering golds, to the fore, I felt my heart flutter with anticipation for the coming month where the garden will give its final flourish before it turns down for the winter. The Malus ioensis ‘Plena’ which I chose for two reasons, their explosion of autumnal colour, running the gamut of them all over the course of the seasons stretch, and its clouds of spring blooms, while still small specimens, are not disappointing me in the Long Border. What a tunnel of magical foliage fire they will be when they’ve grown tall enough to envelop us as we walk through. The stand of four Giant Ash are also now completely bright yellow and almost entirely naked already or raining down a constant shower of leaf glitter in the sunshine and the ground below them, a carpet of gold.
I hope you enjoy this month’s breakdown below…..
THE ROSE GARDEN
We’ve been busy weeding the rose garden paths in lieu of their temporary composting paths (aged wood chip) in the coming months, that will help to insulate the beds in summer, improve the overall microbial life in this area that was deeply excavated in order to get it level and help, as one step, in the war on water, or at least the patches where it doesn’t drain as well as others. A method we used at Little oak for many years with great success prior to gravelling. The paths have been choked with Kikuyu grass which is EVERYWHERE here, or ‘twitch’ as it is sometimes referred, as it will give you one. I battled this organically long and hard at Little Oak for many years and mostly won the battle and developed impressive biceps in the process.
The additional roses to be added this coming spring to plug the gaps, of which there are 19 ion total, have mostly been ordered or are sitting in carts online waiting for me to settle on some of them. We’ve also excitedly been receiving and picking up perennial additions to the rose garden (a bit more about that in the latest Garden Journal 16 and Rose Guides 1 & 2 in Garden Guides), that will vastly change the look and feel of this garden, and speak to the ‘wildness’ I want to create in this otherwise very formal and traditionally laid out parterre garden but also and most importantly, dramatically impact its capacity to take care of itself more. Again, a Little Oak learning.
THE LONG BORDER
As you can see from the opening image with Wednesday happily sat in the Long Border on one of our morning walks, it is flourishing its way through autumn and I am almost jittery with excitement to finish the retaining walls to the right of the border so I can backfill and get both sides even and plant the barrier between this section of garden and the Rose Garden and soon-to-be Veg Garden that run along side it on the terraces. I have been receiving Spring bulbs for the borders, a colour palette of maroon, mauve, pale pinks and peaches and whites/creams, so similar to its palette for the rest of the growing seasons. Tulips, daffodils, grape hyacinths and Spring Stars and next year, when I don’t miss the boat on them as I did this year, Iris reticulata, Frittilaria and Camassia. I also snuck in the most wonderful clematis I picked up from Lambley Nursery, ‘Golden Tiara’ for a pocket of the border. More on these specific plantings in Garden Journal 16.
THE VEGETABLE GARDEN
April saw me complete the plan for the Vegetable Garden which is also home to the Glasshouse, the Cut Flower Garden, the Composting Stations and the Berry Patch and post the first instalment in the Vegetable Garden Guide. This initial instalment outlines our plans in detail in lieu of the 6 tonne excavator coming back in the next fortnight to finish levelling the terrace, delayed by too much rain last spring and mum’s nearby house build. Currently, as you can see below it looks something akin to the parts of Death Valley but it is a blank canvas and will become a magical world of food production that I am probably more excited about creating than any other part of the garden right now as we have deeply missed having our own homegrown fruit and veg this past year. To view Part One of this guide go to the following link: The Vegetable Garden Guide.
DRY GARDEN/POOL AREA
‘Wattle and Wire’, the manufacturers of our lovely timber pool fence came out this last week of April to finish up some work on the final installation and we will now go ahead and cut down the posts to make them all even and go for sign off with the powers that be, so we can at last start planting up the perennial component of this garden of which there is a lot. I hope to get a lot of it in, in the next month or so, provided it doesn’t get too cold and frosty too quickly and then finish off the last of it in early spring.
In the interim we have finished off planting out what olives we already have, the Spanish oiling ‘Piccolo’ variety, 20 of them that will be joined in Spring by their Italian cousins but more on that when it happens. And we’ve also made a good start on the citrus grove in this area too, having planted out the most cold tolerant varieties of orange, cumquat, mandarin and lemons, grapefruit and limes soon to join. As well as figs and a pomegranate which was turned to a pot of sticks on a 40 degree day, now flush with new leaves and two young oranges also, showing new growth freed finally from their pots after too long as we waited to move past the delays the crazy weather of last spring put in motion here. I am thrilled to see them all starting thrive. Our own citrus grove has been a long awaited dream after my youth spent in much hotter climates and not one I could’ve created easily where we were in Tassie.
THE ORCHARD
The orchard sits mainly left to its own devices now at this time of year and we just enjoy watching the leaves turn and fall (which we will clear away) and being as young as the orchard is but we are however, very busy making plans for winter and early spring work in this area. This includes 6 more fruit trees ordered, to fill in the spaces and have been chosen mostly for pollination qualities. We have also begun the lookout for copious amounts of stable waste to mulch the young fruit trees, after we do a big weed around each of them as soon as the ground is softer and they are fully dormant. Normally I would be beginning treatment for Leaf Curl but there was so little of it this year and the trees are still small enough I can hand remove any that appears in the coming spring, though I will be sure to treat for it in spring just in case we get a bad season for it, as per our Orchard Guide disease management routine.
HUGO’S SHED/OFFICE/MUSIC STUDIO AND THE STONE BARN
It was an incredibly heavy job and while I attempted to add some muscle to the operation, in the end it took Hugo and his best mate of equal size as Hugo (both over 6ft) to lift an absolute hunk of a wood heater on a trolley (that it quickly destroyed) and relocate it to Hugo’s shed/office/music studio. It had been mounted inside the old stone barn/shepherd’s hut (circa 1852 - older by 10 years than the homestead) in more recent times as you can see it was painted around, I suspect the 80s or maybe even in the last 6 years with the last ownership. This paves the way for us to clean the old girl up and take her back to her beautiful bones. This stone barn will become our cellar and where we can escape to on those stifling hot summer days, where it is always at least 10 degrees cooler in here. I will sit a wee table and chairs in here somewhere for that very purpose.
GOOD-BYE BELOVED EXCAVATOR
Yes! You read right! We sold our much loved excavator this month after we realised much of the work we were able to do with it had now been done and the remaining jobs were the work of a much larger beast that we contract in. So, rather than have it sit there and cost us money every month and not work hard enough for us anymore, we let her go and would you believe to a Tassie family who have just moved down there, to the same valley we lived in and are related to old acquaintances of ours! She did well for us and made light work of so much of our hole digging. We hope she is happy on the Apple Isle.
MUM’S HOUSE
She waits patiently, this new abode of my mother’s, as we do not, anxious to see her complete but the deadline is June so there is not long to wait now. She is looking amazing inside with its raked ceilings and wonderful views, and mum is very happy with it, so that’s great. We have finished plastering and just waiting on cabinetry to catch up and then it will be the final stretch to get her finished off and we can then look to the large gardens around her.
POWER POLES
Unless you’ve been here you’d not know of the power pole that has been a rather large thorn in my side since we got here. Placed slap bang in the view from our living room to the landscape and creek beyond and right where I wanted to build the large naturalistic garden that spans from the stone barn to mum’s house, a very old power pole, that also blew up one very stormy night Nes and I were home alone, leaving in complete darkness, has stood mocking me since we moved in and still it does………but its days are numbered! We have had the new pole placed 6 metres to the left, out of the view from inside the house and out of the way of the naturalistic garden and into a position it is much easier for me to landscape around and over time, detract from. If money were no object I’d have had them all placed underground but unfortunately, it does not grow on trees!
So, that is The Month at Moorfield for April minus the usual below. I just wanted to take this opportunity however, before I sign off, to thank all of you who took the time to read the Garden Journal 15 which we opened up to all subscribers as we felt it was an uncomfortable but important one to put out there.
So many of you engaged with it, thousands in fact, even beyond my usual readership which is amazing and it clearly spoke to many of you as I suspected it might and why i wanted to contribute part of my own story to the conversation of how powerful gardens and the act of gardening can be, in this particular way. Thank you to those who liked it, and commented and to those of you who messaged me privately with your own stories of the magic to be found in gardens and the way they can restore us. Thank you! Your reception to what was a really vulnerable story for me to begin to tell, made it sit so much easier with me and made the discomfort of doing it, all the more worth it to hear how it reached so many of you. So, thank you, that was the whole point, all the pretty pictures aside, we thinks it important to keep it real and have those essential and often hushed, stigmatised conversations busted wide open and embraced for the true commonplace they are in our society.
As always, much gratitude from us, for you being here. We are excited to be able to start giving a bit more time to our content here too, so stay tuned for the podcast version of our journal entries for those of you who find it easier to listen to than read and more video content of how and what we do here. Be well, good folk.
Pip, Hugo and family xo
READING:
Reels Workshop Workbook so I can start to master short, digestable videos of what we're doing here and how we garden. Such a wonderful course if you get a chance to attend one. And for tulip inspiration and Jo Thompson's plant recipes.FOLLOWING: Everyone in the northern hemisphere who has a garden related Insta account looking for spring inspiration. Favourites are…… @stephenthegardener @rotherramblings @jimiblake_huntingbrookgardens @charlottegardenflow @charlotte_annefidler to name but a few……
WATCHING: Gardener’s World 2023 also for bulb and spring planting inspiration so I can be ready after 12 months of chasing my tail.
Any road trip film/documentary we can find getting excited for our US roadie later this year.
LISTENING TO: ‘American Folk’ soundtrack in preparation for our trip to Nashville in September.
The ‘Beautiful Fantastic’ soundtrack when writing, a wonderful garden centred film which if you haven’t seen, you definitely should.
MAKING: Reels, or at least attempting to, practise makes perfect so I’ll be pumping out as many as I can to get good (and quick) at them.
And recordings of yours truly reading the weekly Garden at Mooorfield Journals for those of you who wish to listen to me prattle on about life here and the garden and all that informs it.
Budgets for retaining walls and veg garden sleepers.
And finally, working on the new Garden guide instalment which is the Herb Garden Guide which I will post up here in May.
PLANTING: Spring bulbs, and perennials with great autumnal colour in the Long Border picked up at a workshop at Antique Perennials last week.
BUYING: A new phone in order to be able to take better quality videos to make reels (and because my current one has been dropped a few hundred times and is almost impossible to read through the cracks).
Thank you for sharing Moorfield and your wisdom Pip xo
This was a great read Pip xx