There are seven committees altogether - Vegetable, Alpine, Herbaceous, Woody, Orchid, Bulb, Tender ornamental. The main trials takes place in the field, but they have ones integrated into the garden e.g. the current peony trial in Seven Acres, they had a Digitalis trial in a wooded bit between rock and the orchard, and are having a sweet peppers trial in the polytunnel. Their Hibiscus trial is a euro wide one. They vary in period of time depending on the plant, there is a Viburnum trial that's going on for a few years, the Dahlia trial that had been going on for years has just finished. There are annual ones like leeks, kale and brussel sprouts. New ones that they will be having are Eucomis, Tradescantia (ones possibly suitable for outside - for the warmer seasons anyway) and Cosmos in containers. There is a Stipa trial at the moment that I am particularly interested in. Each trial has per entry of at least three plants of the same.
Sabatino is a very organised team leader and has many amazing charts & plans of the trials field, what's currently there and what's to come. He works less on a basis of when what has to be done but more how long each task will take. As a lot of the work is very repetitive the team often works together on one big task, so they are a team that's very good at working together. Trials is different to the rest of the gardening in the garden as it is almost likely agriculture, huge patches of ground of the same type of plant. The trials field is 10,000sqm in total. Each field is 10 x 6m. We worked on taking out the finished bearded Iris trial. Some nurseries wanted their plants back for reasons like the plant is not properly on the market yet/ they have limited numbers of them etc. We washed these, cleaning up any that were rotten etc, reduced their leaves and left them to dry in a polytunnel in crates. I also helped hang out a very big garland in the Canal area of the garden and made wreathes.
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| Photo 1: My assymetrical christmas wreath |