Almost November!! Where has the time gone?

 It has been very busy in the gardens the last couple of months.  The garden students have been keeping the hotel gardens maintained and tidy during the wedding season.  Lots of work have gone into keeping main lawn presentable and pathways tidy for the many ceremonies we've had and functions. 

We made some comfrey tea fertiliser and nettle fertiliser.  Seeing as we have so much comfrey growing around the grounds we put it to good use to make our own fertiliser.  You have to cut the leaves of comfrey and nettles and put them in a bucket of water for two weeks.  After the two weeks you can then strain the liquid and put into bottles, ready to use diluted as a plant liquid fertiliser.  

Only trouble is, it is very smelly when it is ready!!!! So we did have lots of fun and holding of noses when preparing the liquid into bottles.

Here is our finished product.  We have used the fertiliser to add good nutrients back to pot plants and hanging baskets.  

Students have been learning how to make flower displays and arrangements.  Cutting flowers to size and choosing their own styles.  Very pretty indeed.

Flower arrangement ready to go on the breakfast tables in the hotel. 

Students are taste testing the cucumbers.  We had some cucumbers that have grown quiet big.  The bigger ones tasted very bitter with tough pips.  So we have learnt that we should harvest cucumbers before they get too big.

Lovely to see our courgettes we grew have been put into another student dinner.  Yummy!

Students are looking great in their new green gardener t-shirts.  You are all looking very professional and ready for work.  Your flower displays look very pretty too!

Above right picture, one of our students is washing and scrubbing our potato harvest, and above also some more potato scrubbing by the team.  Such a wonderful crop of potatoes for our first year.  Potatoes are always a great crop to grow to begin with on any new allotment as they put back loads of nutrients into soil.

Secret Garden

Wow, we have made some great developments and discoveries in the secret garden.  We started to cut through the bamboo and have discovered two ponds.  One pond still has water in it and we found frogs still making it their home. 

The second pond was covered completely with brambles so we set to work cutting down the huge mass.  Very prickly indeed!! We don't think this pond has been used or maintained for over 15 years.

We have lots of more clearing to do, but we are hoping to restore this into the wildlife area and see if we can fill the ponds once again.

It really has been a magical couple of weeks and every student has got really stuck in.  To find ponds and stones and more wildlife we never knew was there has been extremely rewarding.  Our students are contributing to many new ideas to restore the areas in the future. 

Here is what we believe to be an old bridge that went in between the ponds.  Unfortunately, too rotten to save, but it would be great to have the same idea and have a new bridge in this area.

This picture says it all.  We are making progress and can't wait to show you the pond area soon in photos.

If anyone has any old photos of this area, we would love to hear from you.  It would be really interesting and useful to see how it used to be in the past.

Finally, we were really pleased to sell some of our potatoes and crops at the last coffee morning held at the hotel.  Proceeds will go back into the garden to help buy new plants. 

As autumn sets in, we go into our second year of leaf clearing and collecting.  Our last years leaf mould compost is almost ready so it's certainly all worth it. 

Here are some wonderful compliments we've had in the last few months below from guests and visitors staying at the hotel.

'The hotel is looking really refreshing as you walk through the gardens' Aug 21

'The grounds look nice, they are really looked after'  Aug 21

' Look at this beautiful garden, its really stunning here' Aug 21

'Your gardens are looking really nice, it's all looking remarkably different, well done' Aug 21

' Are you the people making these gardens look stunning?' Aug 21  (Love this comment, well done gardeners)