Weather: The hurricane had swerved us by, but it was still pretty gusty in the garden - moments of sun and the odd short shower of rain.
I worked with John today who looks after the Hillside Borders (Photo 1) and the Bedding Display Area (Photo 2) which used to be the Japanese Garden, it is an area where they do further trials on certain kinds of plants or based on the public's favourite. This year there has been a test of New Guinea impatiens - Impatiens hawkeri, some were in pots outside the Hillside Events Centre, as soon as the frost came the flowers of these plants melted in an unsightly way like ice cream. The gravel garden in the middle of the Japanese Garden unfortunately proved too popular with children, as soon as it was raked they would run over all it and over time it looked worse for wear, so Wisley decided to change it and things like the bonsai collection were moved to different places (now in its own avenue next to Alpine).
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| Photo 1: Hillside Borders consisted of a cutting flower bed of flowers Dahlias, Gazania & Gladioli. |
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| Photo 2: Bedding Display Area formerly the Japanese Garden. |
We dug up most of the plants there including a row of Eupatorium capillifolium (Photo 3) which had almost formed a hedge, we left a couple of rows to see if they would branch out. I have never seens E. capillifolium so bushy. John said that they were cut down in June to encourage them to branch out.
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| Photo 3: A hedge of Eupatorium capillifolium. |
The other things we took out were tender perennials or borderline tender - different kinds of Penstemons & Salvias including a new one called Salvia 'Jimmy's Red, a splendens type that was unusually tall (Photo 4).
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| Photo 4: Different Salvias and Penstemons - the bright on in the forefront is Salvia splendens 'Jimmy's Red'. |
I also helped take out some Salvia canariensis which we repotted and took to prop, the rest had been propagated, so we just chucked them out. The soil unfortunately in sections of the Hillside Borders is endemic to Verticillium sp. that attacks hollow stem plants - which is quite a lot of flowering plants. Fortunately some plants are more resistant to it, the Gazanias in the bed however were affected.
After I chased long running shoots back of Phyllstachys nigra 'Bodreana, I lifted them up and cut them back to the base of the main clump. After we had cleared the beds we rotovated all of the soil, the rotovator I used was the Honda GC160 (Photo 5), which I found wasn't a pleasant machine to use on this sandy soil, it kicked back at you quite abruptly & unpredictably including hitting me in the sides quite painfully several times. It didn't help that there were still some big bricks embedded in the soil. It has a tiller at the back of it, it is a four stroke engine. It is a machine where you have to lift up before it moves forward, so going uphill naturally causes it to have more resistance. It has a forward and back lever and a dead man handle that doesn't react so instantaneously, and a wheel at the front that goes down and allows you to transport it from A - B off soil.
After we had rotovated the soil, I roughly raked out the footprints, shovelled & brushed mud back into beds. The stone paths around the Bedding Display Area were good - although there were momentary spurts of rain it dried out quick and dirt seemed to come off it easily.