Team: Formal
Carried on helping Enrico earlier in the day laying out the rest of small gravel and evening out the beds more.
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| Photo 1: The finished parterre in the Walled Garden. |
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| Photo 2: Interpretation board of the piece. |
The bedding in the Canal Garden is being changed over. Only last week
the nice summer bedding of Salvias and other tender perennial plant,
that looked settled and like it had always been there was ripped out (Photo 3).
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| Photo 3: Old bedding taken out and beginning of new bedding. |
The new bedding is to be inspired by an old Disney film 'Song of the South' featuring a b'rer rabbit character who has to go through a thicket of thorns. So block ribbons of Polyanthus was laid down and planted in (Photo 4 & 5), each block a different colour, then lined with some sad looking
Santolina chamaecyparissus. These were looking very sorry because they had been taken out of the Walled Garden from the last bedding and left in crates uncared for. Someone had pointed out in the beginning that they would be neglected. Between the swathes of Polyanthus to represent the thicket, long pieces of Rubus biflorus were stuck in the ground (Photo 5).
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| Photo 4: Andy responsible for the design of the this bedding scheme, planting in the Polyanthus. |
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| Photo 4: Lovely volunteer who I sadly forget the name of planting in Polyanthus also. |
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| Photo 5: The finished piece swathes of polyanthus outlined sad Santolina chamaecyparissus and blocks of Rubus biflorus to create 'the thicket' |
People kept wondering if we were getting the Rubus to root or if we were training anything up them. So we had to explain that it was just for effect, purely for aesthetic value like sculpture. There were a couple of issues using the Rubus, first the white plume that gave the effect rubbed off easily from handling, when sticking it into the ground. Then initially we were told that there was an unlimited supply of them, but then there wasn't enough, so there was the fiasco of having built up some areas more densely, we had to thin them out again to make sure we had some for all the gaps. This meant double handling and the end result which I'm not sure is noticeable to anyone else was very unevenly distributed and some of the sticks were more red than white.
With year 2 trainee Gearoid I also helped process already cut Rubus for use. We stripped off all the leaves and cut off all the lateral shoots.
