During the last few weeks I’ve been taking advantage of the relatively mild weather to develop a scented woodland area. Alongside Cathy Kitchingman in the Prospect House Garden, we have been renovating a previously relatively wild area. A slightly past its best wooden playhouse has been removed with gusto by our axe wielding teenagers and carted off to be burnt. The ivy that has spread from under the yew hedge backdrop has been removed, and the overenthusiastic Lamium orvala (red deadnettle) has been rigorously restrained. We have crown-lifted the pretty hazels to allow for underplanting, and pruned heavily the spreading Choisya ternata. The Epimedium has been split and spread about and the hellebore seedlings have been removed, the bigger ones to be grown on in pots and replanted elsewhere. We have constructed a path through the middle by clearing any growth and laying a double layer of membrane. We then edged the path with thick branches and covered the membrane with a dense layer of wood chip. The whole bed is going to be brought out by about a metre and a half to allow for more planting.
An orange hamamelis (witch hazel) which is not thriving in a too dry area of the garden will be moved here to provide scent on the edge of the path and we will introduce other scented part-shade lovers. This includes Sarcococca (Christmas Box), Daphne bholua ‘Jaqueline Postill’ and Lonicera standishii ‘Budapest’, a shrubby winter flowering honeysuckle with delicious scent. We already have an established Lilac and Laburnum and if space allows at the higher level we will add a Viburnum bodnantense. We have split some Gallium odorata (sweet woodruff) for ground cover and will add in some Viola odorata. Lily of the valley would work but is too invasive for what we want, but to extend the interest into summer – always a challenge for shady areas - we might grow the annual Nicotiana sylvestris.
Aside from those, we are planning to try our hand at building a willow arbour and will provide feedback on that in a later post! Next September we will add more woodland bulbs including the woodland Anemone nemerosa and potentially even some native bluebells, Hyacinthoides non-scripta, (not the highly invasive Spanish bluebell, Hyacinthoides hispanica). The existing snowdrops have been split and concentrated close to the base of winter-bare shrubs. We will also be adding ferns for texture, Dryopteris felix-mas and Polystichum setiferum.
In more generic advice I have started cutting back grasses, which have already started sprouting new growth in this very mild winter. Bulbs are shooting up, making it inadvisable to delay further in the winter cut back. I have sorted out the first seeds to sow but am sitting on my hands until light levels improve before sowing. Most of the roses have been pruned and the emerging shoots of celandine rigorously weeded out. Spring is waiting in the wings.
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