The season has moved around again – and we are approaching another autumn and winter!

Time, once more, to tidy the garden in readiness for its winter sleep, to clear the herbaceous borders, to do the autumn lawn maintenance, to look at the seed catalogues so that we can plan next years flowers.
On the maintenance front, we attended to our first “green” roof (on a tower block) this summer. It is made up of Sedums and was badly affected by weeds. This type of area can only be weeded by hand, so two of us were on our hands and knees, all day, on one of the hottest days of the year! We had to do a small section at a time, then head for the shade to cool down and rehydrate before doing another section. We were scuttling about that roof garden like a couple of beetles.

Artificial turf is becoming very popular, judging by the increased sales this year. We have been asked to return and do some maintenance work on a couple of artificial lawns that we laid some time ago. The most serious was an area that had been flooded, but all that was needed was re-sanding on the surface.

We had a challenging job when one of our customers wanted to replace his boundary fence with a brick wall. In order to approach the work area we had to remove a large border of mature and semi-mature shrubs, including some quite large Prunus Laurocerasus (Laurels), the client wanted to retain all the shrubs, so we had to bring them back to the nursery, pot them up and store them until replanting. It is difficult at the best of times to dig up and keep mature plants alive, but to do it in the summer is very risky – we were lucky though and only lost a few Ericas.

We have added a new item to our stock here at the yard – we can now offer “Bio-dress” soil in jumbo bags. “Bio-dress” soil is a blend of 10mm Norfolk topsoil and compost, the topsoil provides a high quality landscaping medium and the compost provides a the organic matter to kick-start plant development.

Our gap-year student, James, finished his work experience with us in the summer and has returned to college to finish his degree. He proved to be a very good addition to our team, he was always keen to learn as much as he could from us professionals about the practical side of the horticulture and landscaping industry, he will be much missed by us all.

My vegetable patch, behind the barn, is developing nicely; with the increasing food prices and growing interest in organic fruit and vegetables we are hoping to interest our customers in starting their own veg patches – whether it be an area at the bottom of their garden, or in the borders, or even in the special grow bags that are becoming an increasingly popular way to grow anything from tomatoes to strawberries. If anyone is interested in starting a vegetable patch we will be only too happy to offer any advice you might need. If you are visiting us at Redcroft Farm and would like to see our vegetable patch for ideas, please ask at reception.
TTFN - Colin, the gardener.