This has been a good week for gardening.
Damper, cooler weather means less time spent watering, although the pots and everything in the greenhouses still dry out fast on warm days.
Weeds have definitely popped up, benefiting from the recent rain to germinate and grow rapidly, but they are mostly fairly quick to hoe off right now.
We have carried on pricking out annual and veg seedlings, potting on and planting out as soon as their roots are well developed.
Great Dixter student tour (Image: Norfolk School of Gardening) You may have noticed how lovely many roses are already looking, having loved the heat and lack of rain in late spring.
We have started the seemingly endless summer job of deadheading them to keep them flowering as long as possible, and we have started cutting enough sweet peas to fill the room with their fragrance.
Yes, June has arrived and with it a gorgeous early summer with the gardens bursting with colour and the promise of so much more to come.
If it was a good week for gardening, it was also a great week to look at gardens.
Sissinghurst from the tower (Image: Norfolk School of Gardening) We had our annual study trip to Kent and Sussex with the Diploma in Garden Design students for private visits to both Great Dixter and Sissinghurst.
These are two of the most important gardens, not just in Britain but in the world, and it is such a privilege to get out-of-hours access to them both with guided tours by their incredibly knowledgeable gardeners.
These gardens are only a few miles from each other and, having been created at a similar time, they share influences and elements such as the use of yew hedging and brick pathways to create structure and garden rooms.
However, the approach of Christopher Lloyd at Great Dixter and Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson at Sissinghurst was very different, and the gardens they created are both stunning and fascinating.
Great Dixter gardeners’ tools (Image: Norfolk School of Gardening) For design students, there is much to discover, admire and learn, and they headed back to Norfolk and Suffolk with notebooks filled with ideas and phones full of photos.
Back in the classroom, Sam Outing shared some of his learnings from his recent work at Chelsea Flower Show with a packed Border Design course.
This is a very popular two-day course where students are introduced to the principles of garden design and colour theory, then guided to apply these to the design of their own border.
We will be running this course again in the autumn and there are currently a few places left.
Many of our courses are now fully booked, but these are a few which have some spaces available.
Let us know if you’d like to join us:
· Advanced Practical Gardening – 11th June
· Developing an Annual Maintenance Plan – 25th June
· Summer Pruning – 26th June
· Introduction to Garden Design – 11th September
· Certificate in Practical Horticulture – 12th September
Rosa ‘Souvenir du Docteur Jarmain’ (Image: Norfolk School of Gardening) Plant of the Week
Rosa ‘Souvenir du Docteur Jamain’ was first introduced in 1865 by French rose breeder, Lacharme.
It became a firm favourite of the renowned plantswoman Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst, where she propagated and used it repeatedly throughout the rose garden.
It is one of the best climbers for a north-facing wall, as the velvety, deep claret-coloured flowers tend to fade in full sun.
The flowers are highly scented with an old-rose fragrance.
The main flush of flowers appears in early summer but will continue to have smaller bursts until autumn.
They are tolerant of poor soils, have few thorns, and can be grown as an open shrub if they are given support.
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