In the world of plant-growing, spring can be a time where different priorities are pulling your attention in different directions, and there's a rising sense that everything needs doing pretty soon (as in now). So with this in mind, re-assessing our priorities was a worthwhile thing to do earlier this week. There are many plants on the farm waiting for their new homes, and they don't get planted until a) we've planned where they're going, and b) the farm team becomes available to prepare the ground and start planting.
We decided that the plants most urgently needing to get in the ground are the bare root shrubs. These are currently in a trench heeled-in, and include lots of roses as well as a wide array of shrubs and trees, many of which will become hedgerows.
Plans have now started for a new rose garden. A breath-taking selection of varieties have been delivered, ranging from David Austin's petal-packed English roses, to the open & elegant species. There are also quite a few roses already growing on the farm & we pruned these earlier in the week. It feels good to have opened up the plants, getting rid of the unhealthy or excess growth so that their paired-back frames can focus energy into the stems, leaves and flowers that we're all excited for. With the prunings raked up and taken off to the burning pile, the job of crawling among the plants to uncover the labels was made a lot easier. I figured out which existing varieties are planted where, and marked them all out on paper.
Planning for the new planting scheme feels like a giant multi-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. My office floor and desk are currently covered with images of all the varieties, each with details regarding size, type and growing conditions written next to them. This is my favourite way to plan, where I can visualise everything and move pieces of paper around to get to grips with the spacings & quantities. I've always felt that this is a strange, indulgent way of working, but struggle to plan effectively on a computer or without images of the plants to hand. It's reassuring that my colleagues at Floret are also very visual learners and that their planning and projects involve lots of paper and wall space too! It's the most freeing way to work for me. That said, I should get back to it… those buds are fattening up!