Garden News | January

Happy New Year

to all our members from me and the rest of the gardeners!

I hope you managed to get into Leonardslee at some point over the festive period and walked off some of those chocolates and mince pies! A new year of course brings new hope and excitement for all that the garden has to offer for the year ahead, but of course Winter obviously isn’t over just yet!  There is still plenty for you to see and do in the garden here right now and there will also be plenty for our garden team to be getting on with to keep them warm during January as well.

First year as Head Gardener at Leonardslee

I’ve just completed my first year as Head Gardener at Leonardslee and so it seems like a good opportunity to look back and think about what we achieved in the garden in 2021 and also look ahead to what we hope to accomplish in 2022.

On the horticultural side, we planted around 40,000 bulbs last year including 20,000 Snowdrops around the lakes, 5000 Camassia on the banks near the Engine House café, 5000 white ‘Thalia’ Daffodils on the banks near Mossy Ghyll and 5000 wild orphanidia Tulips on the Eucalyptus Lawns near the Vineyard. Up around the Mansion courtyard beds we put in huge numbers and varieties of Alliums and Fritillaries and much more besides so make sure you keep visiting us over the coming months to see them beginning to flower.

Snowdrops

Foxgloves

We also planted hundreds of Foxgloves last year in various shapes and sizes along with some new Rhododendrons, Camellias and Azaleas in the beds and borders at the top of the garden, so Spring and Summer 2022 looks set to be an even better floral display, if that were possible! 

We were busy clearing historic views that were in danger of being lost in 2021 too. At the Rotunda for instance we felled a number of small self-seeded saplings and hard pruned several banks of Azaleas so that you can now clearly see the lakes and Mossy Ghyll beyond. We also improved the views and vistas as The Dell and outside the Top Garden looking east. And talking of the Top Garden, this was an ‘new’ area that we re-opened this year. It connects the north end of the garden with the Deer Park to the south and was the original site for the Pinetum, before it was mostly lost in the 1987 great storm. It’s well worth an explore, particularly when the bluebells flower later in the year.

Other improvements have included some much needed restoration pruning of some of our Camellias, clearing areas around the lakes including a great new spot on the east side of Middle Pond and the continued path and wall repairs around the garden.

Behind the Scenes

Behind the scenes we’ve been just as busy. We’ve had our Champion Trees re-measured and verified, meaning that we now have 26 British Champions, a further 3 English Champions and over 70 County Champions as well as a certified Monumental Tree (our Quercus canadensis on the west side of the lakes, which is the largest of its kind recorded anywhere in the World!) This year we plan to introduce a Champion Tree trail and map as well as a series of dedicated tree walks for visitors. And while we’re on the subject of talks, there are plans afoot for more garden tours in 2022 including some specialist butterfly and wildflower walks.

We’ve spent much of the year creating a Garden Management Plan for Leonardslee, with the assistance of respected horticulturalist and author Kenneth Cox. This will allow us to plan for the big project work that we need to do in the garden over the next five years and beyond. Towards the top of that list will be new planting schemes across the garden.

We plan to replant the borders around the Mansion with a series of exotic schemes as well as create a number of herbaceous beds opposite the west façade. There are also plans for a prairie style scheme below the north east corner of the mansion and then a whole raft of planting drifts across the wider garden to include the likes of Agapanthus, Hydrangeas. Magnolias and Astilbe for instance. All of the new designs will aim to increase the interest during the Summer months and extend our season of interest whilst still respecting the spirit of place for this Grade I listed Woodland Garden. Once all that’s done, we’ll start to think about some more Winter interest planting, but first things first!

Another interesting development for the year ahead will be to register our Loderi Rhododendrons and associated Leonardslee Hybrids as a National Collection with Plant Heritage. There’s still a bit of work to do in terms of recording and labelling but if that is accepted we have some ideas for further collections in the future too.

So as you can see, the garden team have been pretty busy over the last 12 months and with lots of exciting projects ahead, it looks like we’ll be pretty busy for the next 12 months too! We look forward to seeing you here again soon where you can start to enjoy the fruits of some of our labours.  

Jamie Harris, Head Gardener