Our Garden in June 🐝🌿🌱🌳🌺

Hello, it's Erika here with the June update on the Garden. 

It may not feel like summer weather wise, but the garden has truly come alive now and most of our time is shared between mowing, weeding, watering and harvesting. Even with our extra seasonal staff and volunteers we all have very busy days! 

The plants that we transplanted earlier this month are slowly establishing. They had a rather challenging start due to the very keen rabbits living on site. The rabbits seem to have a rather fine taste and prefer violas, dill, thyme and anise hyssop! We (hopefully) solved the problem by putting netting over some of the more appetising plants.

Our biggest focus just now is the rose harvest. We have been longing for the roses to start flowering and finally they have! The last week we have been (I'm)patiently waiting for the petals to dry so that we can harvest them. I am thankful that we haven't had to deal with a drought, but some dry days in a row would be desirable! The Apothecary rose flowers for about 4 weeks between June and July, and during that time we need to harvest enough to meet the demand of our popular rose gin. Every last petal harvested last year has already been used. It is by far our biggest harvest, and compared to the other botanicals it has a very short flowering season. I'll update you in July on how it all worked out!

Recently we've had a lot of bee swarms from our hives, which is such an exciting and slightly terrifying thing to witness. Initially it sounds like a big machine coming closer, and then suddenly you're in the middle of a cloud of bees. Luckily, they tend not to sting when they're swarming! Honeybees swarm because the colony has outgrown the hive and the old queen leaves with some of the bees to find a new home, leaving a new queen and half of the colony in the hive. The swarming bees then tend to settle in a cluster nearby. This is when our beekeeper Alison will save the day and move the swarm to an empty hive.

Highlights in the garden this month, aside from the flowering roses, are the peonies, the ornamental polytunnel where the creeping thyme is flowering, the flowering dogwood by the production beds, the busy bees on the Angelica flowers and the mallows in the glasshouse. It's well worth a visit if you want to get a taste of summer! Our Discovery Tours include an in-depth tour of the Garden and we have a 25% off tours during July. If you're interested click here and used code SGDTour25.

Stay warm and stay dry ☺️

Erika