All I can say is WOW! What growth the plant kingdom has done in this past month. I have never before seen such an explosion of life this early in the year, it seemed to happen in a blink of an eye. I can understand how the Irish have 40 words to describe the colour of green – the energy at this stage is electric – I have been watching in awe and it fills me with such excitement.
What does this mean to us all in the garden – well two tasks dominate.
Firstly, the parts of your garden which is are grass will need cutting, relentlessly. However, I love to encourage wild unkept grass areas, it saves so much time and adds so much value to a gardens biodiversity. Secondly, give your cultivated plants the space to grow, to do this you will have to pull out some of those unwanted plants!
We have had such a lovely burst of sunshine after such a cold and wet start to the year. The amount of people who have said that their plants and garden are so far behind, forget that nature doesn’t work to a tick of a clock or our human conception of time – she works outside time, in her own perfect rhythm. All that has been proved by this amazing surge of life we have seen in over this last week, however that does mean a little more work for us gardeners!
As you may know, we use no chemicals whatsoever at The Secret Garden, not even any organic chemicals,so this is a very labour-intensive period for us. As our garden is open to the public and a we are a working herb nursery, there is a lot to do.
For the harvesting – this is the busiest time for us, we are continually harvesting violets, sweet cicely, bog myrtle, lemon balm, lemon verbena, mints etc – we are so fortunate that we have a team of volunteers that come purely to harvest, enjoy being outside, handling the plants, and placing their crop into the drying room – if you ever wish to volunteer please email our head harvester, Sarah, sarah@secretgardendistillery.co.uk
In the Nursery, we are pricking out the new plants we grew from seeds, potting on and busy re-stocking the nursery herbs that are for sale – we currently have over 700 varities of herbs to sell.
And in the Garden, we are continually trying to keep up with Mother Earth’s amazing growth to keep the garden at its best, which in my opinion is a balance – don’t have too much lawn and allow the unwanted plants to flourish somewhere else in a garden.
However, the most important garden task for June is – to find time to sit back and live in awe of the beauty of nature!
