15th Annual Grand Garden and Craft Fair

Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th May 2012

This is the final Grand Garden and Craft Fair at Mount Stewart. Next year there is going to be a new event in its place, the proposed dates being 22nd and 23rd June. No details have been announced yet so what can it be, we all wonder. Very exciting.

Lots of very healthy plants

Great band, we found ourselves swinging along (a bit embarrassing)

On show were Edith, Lady Londonderry’s garden notebooks from the mid 1920s which contain watercolour diagrams of the parterres in the Italian Garden. These show how she intended the colours in her planting to blend and bleed into one another.

A few of us were tempted to go on this but we weren’t allowed. Why should children get all the fun?

Jill

Mount Stewart gardens have some competition!

Wednesday 9th May 2012

Doreen’s garden. Wednesday volunteers – Norma, Rosemary, Olive, Doreen, Wilf, Pat and Rosemary.

Mount Stewart is sometimes known as one of the Jewels in the Crown of the National Trust. Well, there is another Jewel just outside Newtownards, not as large (one acre) but very impressive, beautiful and well loved. Doreen, a Wednesday volunteer, invited the other Wednesday volunteers to go and visit her garden at lunch time (more skiving). We wondered if we should bring our secateurs and trowels but no, there was no hidden agenda.

She says it is not a designed garden but a very personal garden which has evolved as her knowledge and love of plants has grown. It is completely organic and she uses her homemade compost. It is the most wonderful garden to wander around with very large beds with hundreds of tulips, exotic plants and shrubs as well as more common ones all planted closely together. Doreen has collected an enormous variety of shrubs and plants and keeps having to make new flowerbeds.

She also has a vegetable garden, greenhouse, summerhouse, pond, fruit trees, wooden arches and compost bays. Even with all this it most certainly is not cluttered, just very restful for a wander. All this and chocolate cake and sun. Perfect afternoon. Thank you Doreen. I know this is nothing to do with Mount Stewart but it was part of the day in the life of a Mount Stewart Volunteer. None of us would have met each other if we hadn’t been volunteers at Mount Stewart.

Jill

Painting and planting

Wednesday 2nd May 2012

Mount Stewart is a heavenly place for artists to paint. Nicola Russell, painting Rhododendron ‘Susan’ in the Lily Wood, got a lot of admiring attention from the visitors.

Lots of planting today. Seeds of Dianthus Barbatus ‘Scarlet Beauty’ and ‘Deschberg’ and Antirrhinums ‘Orange Wonder’ had been sown in November in the nursery, we pricked them out into small modules in Feb, potted them on in March and finally planted them out today in the area around Reception. It is great for the volunteers to see the final result of their work. The plants had to be soaked before planting so we took the opportunity, first time in eight years for me, to skive off and drink coffee and eat cake hidden (or so we thought) down the side of the restaurant, responsible women playing truant. I won’t say who found us but he did. Shame on us.

Jill

A sea of white tulips

Wednesday 25th April 2012

White tulips in the Sunk Garden

This year, for the first time, all the tulips in the Gardens are white (except for an odd rogue). I took a wander, after my day’s work, to have a look. Thousands were planted in the Sunk Garden, in troughs under the pergola, in the Spanish Garden, along the Dodo Terrace, in all the pots on the Terrace and in the Shamrock Garden. Everywhere you looked there were white tulips. They look wonderful and seem to bring all of the formal gardens together in a peaceful, serene and magical way.

Rosemary and I were working with Alan in the nursery potting on plugs of Coleus ‘Display’, Coleus Colissima ‘Raspberry’, Euphorbia ‘Ruby Charm’, Mimulus ‘Highland Red’ and Pelargonium Pelgardini ‘Mrs Pollock’. Some of these will be planted in the gardens and some will be for sale in the Garden Shop. All the volunteers love working in the nursery and we actually had to toss up for who would have the day there. We worked at the speed of light so that Alan would ask for ‘that amazingly speedy pair’ the next time he needed someone to help.

Jill

There’s some serious planting going on in the Italian Garden

Wednesday 18th April 2012

Trillium grandiflorum. Lily Wood.
I go looking for this every year and only once was disappointed when it had been completely blackened by an overnight frost.

Today was serious planting day in the Italian Garden. First of all we dug up hundreds of Hermodactylus tuberosus (Widow iris) which had been planted randomly around the yew trees about five years ago. We gathered some of them into groups of about ten and replanted them. Dianthus Barbatus ‘albus’, Dianthus Barbatus ‘deschberg’ and Antirrhinum majus ‘flavee’ were also planted around the two yew trees. On the raised beds we planted Gaillardia ‘Mesa yellow’, Eryngium planum ‘blue glitter’, Rudbeckia hirta and Correopsis presto. Hundreds of plants went in so hopefully it will be amazing.

Jill

Working in the Mairi garden

Wednesday 11th April 2012

Mairi Garden Fountain

The fountain in the Mairi Garden is now working on all cylinders and transforms the Garden. It hasn’t worked properly since it was built (see Diary for 21^st Sept.). It looks wonderful and she definitely has a happier smile on her face. The visitors love it and are stopping to admire it much more than previously.

The outer beds in the Mairi Garden have usually just had ground cover. This year all the beds have been planted up with perennial and biennial plants. We were putting in Alcea Crimson (let’s hope that they escape the dreaded hollyhock rust), Begonia Summer Wings, Gladiolus Traderhorn and Gladiolus Zorro. Other plants have been going in over the last four weeks so it is going to be completely different to other years. Can’t wait.

Jill

Spot the volunteers

Wednesday 4th April 2012

Spot the volunteers. Doreen is offering a prize to who can spot the most volunteers. The prize being a day’s weeding at Mount Stewart.

Today’s job was working on the beds along the entrance path from the car park to Reception. The three most dreaded weeds in Mount Stewart are Oxalis, Symphytum and Ground Elder. Well, the three had combined in mighty splendour along the bed and I just wanted to go home and drink tea and eat chocolate cake. This was no trowel and bucket work, it was forks and wheelbarrows and a lot of huffing and puffing. Most of it was working under trees and bushes so we are not sure how many of us were there.

A lot of visitors as it was school holidays, lots of children having a good time.

Jill