‘The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now’’
so the old proverb goes.
Preparing for our Spring garden is a bit like this. All good gardeners are thinking a season or two in advance and in many cases longer. For instance, at Chippenham Park Gardens, Cambridgeshire, we will be mulching the borders with composted leaves collected last autumn. Over the last month we have been collecting fallen leaves, and depositing them in the large, triple-bay compost bays we built a few years ago. All the new leaves and cuttings go in at one end and the well-composted leaf mould comes out the other end a year later. On a quiet, cold winter’s day each bay will get turned into the next with the tractor and so the whole process will continue.
This is great stuff applied as a thick mulch. Leaf mould has a slightly lower PH so helps to neutralise the PH of our slightly alkaline soil of our garden here in East Cambridgeshire. The well-rotted muck we add from the local, organic cattle grazed in the park, acts as an effective fertiliser too.
Top tips from our gardener, Michael:
Make sure that you apply it on the borders at least 3 inches deep.
Better to do half the beds properly every other year than a thin mulch over all the borders. Not only does this look tidy at the end of the year but it holds in moisture, suppresses weeds and improves soil structure.
Our chalky soil is very free-draining. One advantage of this is that our plants seem to survive some colder temperatures because they rarely sit in very wet soil in winter months.
We are lucky enough to have large areas of stunning daffodils in the gardens and in the early autumn this year we have been planting a few thousand more for further interest when the Spring garden comes to life. Narcissus Emerald Green, Actaea, Dreamlight, Princess Zaide and Silver Chimes are all new daffodil varieties to look out for when you visit our spring gardens. These are mostly of the white or paler variety. N. Actaea is highly scented and N. Princess Zaide is a late-flowering daffodil to help extend the season of interest.
We also plant tulips in the borders and in the long grass ready for the Spring garden. We have found Kaufmanniana tulips to be reliably perennial in the borders and good for early splashes of interest. They are shorter in stature than most tulips, but long-lived. In the long grass a sturdy, upright, white tulip called ‘Cheers’ looks magnificent for weeks on end. We also plant up many pots of tulips. It has become something of an obsession and we love to place these eye-catching, joyful splashes of intense colour out on the tables in the tearoom café in our gardens or on the front terrace for the early Spring weddings. Planting up 40-50 of these tulips, can be quite a lengthy job but the pleasure they will give in a few months time makes it entirely worthwhile. Some new ones to look out for when you come for a walk in our Spring gardens are Tulipa “Rococo Double’ and T. “Ice Cream’.
After the storms dead trees and branches need to be tidied away in piles or put on the bonfire heap. The last grass cut here was done in November. Any later and we find the little tips of the snowdrops are already pushing through and can get damaged. These will be the first heralds of Spring in the Gardens
at Chippenham Park. They are our signature flower and we are extremely lucky that they have naturalised in vast swathes through the Wilderness and into the woodlands, perfect for a walk.
The gardens at Chippenham Park open from 18th January until 16th April 2025.
Payment at gate on entry. We are currently a cash-only facility. See all Important Entry Information here.