January 2008

At last they arrived, 14 semi-mature trees on the back of a lorry, some weighing over a quarter of a ton and not the easiest of objects to handle with frozen rootballs a metre square.

We had hand-dug the holes on the steep bank but on the flat areas a small digger made life a little easier, as well as a little messier!. Once in, the effect of these trees and shrubs was very pleasing, with each one having an irrigation pipe and solid stake. It will require a bit of watering to tide them through their first year, in the event of a dry spell, but our full vision of the Japanese style garden is finally beginning to emerge. For those with a keen interest in specialist trees the ones we have planted are as follows: Pyyllostachys Aurea,Sorbus Joseph Rock,Fraxinus Augustifolia “Raywood”, Prunus Shirotae,P Kanzan,P Shirofugen,P Amanogawa, Betula Nigra and Cornus Controversa. The final cherry, P Kiku shidare sakura(Cheal’s Weeping), will arrive in the next few weeks.

All the activity in the garden attracted attention and Roz and Gillian from our Events and Sales department, were given a conducted tour. They were taken by the concept of looking at the Japanese garden as “an extra room” and there are already plans to utilise it as an added dimension for wedding ceremonies and handfast blessings with the pagoda,bridge and water-features(not to mention the trees) offering a pleasant background for photographs. As with all new planting we can hardly wait for the first green shoots of spring to emerge to bring the garden alive and let us see if our ideas have worked.

As we make our way through January we have had very seasonal weather. Rain, snow, frost,floods and just the occasional glimpse of the sun but snowdrops and aconites are popping up…these hardy harbingers of the new season. Innes

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