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| Garden Diary:
Nature in the garden : Butterflies and Moths Bees Click the links above for our garden diary with tips, tricks and techniques and jobs to do in the garden each month plus lots of photos from our our garden. |
Garden Open Days 2012 |
| About
our garden: (click
the photos to see full size image)
We garden in South Cheshire in the small village of Hankelow. Our garden reflects our passion for herbaceous perennials and we try to use them in varied ways - sometimes formal and colour themed, and at other times free-flowing, informal and innovative. Our aim is to be able to trial plants in a real garden setting so that we can offer advice from experience and provide a true assessment of the merits and demerits of a plant. Hankelow is about 60m above sea level at the edge of Cheshire plain. We have a plot of about a third of an acre. About half of it is given over to garden, the remainder is for our nursery stock beds. The house and garden were new in 2000. In 2011 we developed a long border running alongside our nursery area, which proved that you can plan, dig, plant and enjoy a mature looking border all in one season. This year we are revamping some of our beds and hoping to get time to dig and plant another long border parallel to our 2011 project. Our soil is a good grey-black silt overlying sand and gravel, richly peppered with builders rubble in places. Generally it is just on the acid side of neutral. We have had to break up a compacted layer about 2ft below the surface and now the soil is free draining, easy to work but holds little moisture or nutrients. Because of its recent past as a piece of neglected grazing land, the soil is full of weed seed that germinates every time the soil is disturbed. For those of you who don't know Cheshire we have a climate that fits into hardiness zone 8 with occasional mild winters nearer to zone 9 and extreme winters of zone 7. Our lowest recorded temperature was -18c on 24 Dec 2010. We (normally) have plenty of rain in winter but seem to miss the summer rain. Our garden experiences regular strong cold winds thanks to our openness to the northwest and the Cheshire gap. Click here for a photo album of our garden in July, August and September
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 Round
and About:
Hankelow is a lovely little village full of charm radiating from its traditional centre: the village green and duck pond with plenty of space to picnic and play. The nearby village of Audlem is a full of interest with great cafes, pub and canalside walks.
Photo © 2010 Len & Meg Underwood. Used by kind permission
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© 2010 Len & Meg Underwood. Used by kind permission
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 Photo © 2010 Len & Meg Underwood. Used by kind permission |
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