Rethinking "The Water Walk"

It is time to deal with The Water Walk.  A while back we realized something had gone horribly wrong here.  The Water Walk, linking the Main Courtyard and The West Wing Garden, was intended to be part of a tour de force of classic axial landscape design. Take a look at the photograph below, taken last summer, and you will see the problem.

Check out the position of the four persimmon trees. They are not symmetrically aligned within the design. It all looks unresolved and really, really wrong. We have been talking about digging up the persimmon trees and moving them.  Midwinter is the right time to do this but it is a horrid, backbreaking  job and would set the trees back years.  Fortunately there might be another solution. Our Head Gardener's partner, local chef Jay Fraser, figured out that instead of moving the trees we needed to realign the axis. How?  By relocating one of the two urns. These urns now sit symmetrically on each side of a new axial line which runs straight between the persimmon trees. The photo at the top of this page shows this realignment.  The urn on the left has been shifted, so the urns are closer than before and the axis has now moved to the right.

The fact that one of the raised troughs which will form The Water Walk will now be wider than the other, as shown by the lines of bricks, doesn't seem to matter one jot.  So now it looks like this problem can be solved more easily than we had feared; like they say, "There is more than one way to skin a cat".  To see more on The Water Walk click here

Inspiration from the Past.

About ten years ago, this pond in a large courtyard in Lucca, Tuscany, became the initial inspiration for The Octagon in The Main Courtyard - a  circular pond with a fountain at the centre, all set in a raised octagon.  Simple, beautiful and attainable.

This photograph, taken last week by our friend,  Richard Tulloch,  shows how the axis that runs from the centre of the underground cellar on the far side of the courtyard bisects the pond, passing through the fountain. The axis terminates at the house.  This is exactly as it is in our design here at The Drip, Mudgee, so the photo gives us a good idea of the future vista from The High Pergola across to our wine cellar.

We still have a way to go before The Octagon at The Drip is quite as charming as this, and the sculptures by Michelangelo are more likely to be something by a local Mudgee artist. But the creation of a worthwhile garden takes time, so please be patient.  We will get there eventually.  For more on The Octagon in The Main Courtyard click here

Frosty Mornings in The Hill Garden

Each night the temperature at The Drip is falling well below zero. Minus five is not uncommon.  Though the skies are clear and the sun shines, the daytime temperatures rise to something around ten degrees, often less. This is winter in Mudgee, it's damn cold, the air is crisp and clean and we are loving it!

The frost stays in The Hill Garden till late morning at this time of year.  The dark line through the frost in this photo shows where our Head Gardener, Peter Marshall, recently planted Miscanthus sinesis.  Peter divided three large clumps of this decorative grass and this yielded over a hundred new plants,  allowing us to the define the "bones" of The Hill Garden.

The Hill Garden is a transitional zone between the formal gardens close to the house and the natural bushland of The Drip and The Munghorn Gap.  For more on the design of The Hill Garden click here

What's Blooming this Week

 

The hazelnut trees in The Old Orchard adjacent to the house have produced catkins this week.

These ancient trees, one male and one female, have been growing here since around 1880, and are a relic of the original plantings made here at The Drip by the Blackman family as was the honeysuckle hedge that was mentioned on this blog last week. We have no idea what variety they are, but they bear reasinable crops in most years.

This week we will be planting a whole new hedge of hazelnuts in The Nuttery.  These are named varieties supplied by Clem and Vanessa Cox of Mudgee Gourmet.  For more on The Nuttery click here

Renovating an Old Hedge

Today a friend lent a hand and got stuck into a job that we have been meaning to do for ages, cutting an ancient hedge of Winter Honeysuckle, Lonicera fragrantissima, back almost to ground level.

The honeysuckle hedge that divides The Horse Paddock from the native bushland was planted over a hundred years ago by the original European settlers, the Blackman family, and is the last remaining section of what was once an extensive system of boundary hedges at The Drip.  In the twentieth century the family's fortunes declined and for many years the hedging had been neglected, eventually becoming an overgrown eyesore.  By cutting it back at this time of year we are allowing it to burst into vigorous new life in the Spring and it will soon provide a dense and beautiful boundary as it must have done so many years ago.

Renovating the hedge allows us to open up The Honeysuckle Track which forms part of The Main Garden Walk.  To see more about this walk click here.

Lemon Trees in Terracotta Pots

For us here at The Drip, lemon trees in terracotta pots are a potent reminder of happy times spent in Tuscany, in Sicily and on the Amalfi Coast.

We have a small collection of old Florentine-style terracotta pots in which we grow a number of varieties of lemon.  This very young "lemonade tree", a gift from Clive's Mum, Elizabeth Poolman, has just borne fruit for the first time, providing a fresh Vitamin C drink just when it is needed in mid-winter.

The wire guard protecting the tree from destruction by wallabies will be dispensed with when we have finally enclosed The Main Courtyard and can at last provide a safe environment. For more on The Main Courtyard click here to go to the relevant page of our new website.

Notes from the Library #19

Our library contains a number of books about the garden at Sissinghurst.  This much loved and highly influential garden, created by Vita Sackville-West, was one of the inspirations for the gardens here and the first tree we planted, a Sevillano Olive, was planted on the 100th anniversary of Vita's  birthday,  9 March 1992.

The recent realization that Michael's great-grandmother, Emily Frances Windsor, sister of Thomas Other Windsor, Earl of Plymouth, was a blood relative of Vita Sackville-West gives added interest not only to our books on Sissinghurst but also to the various photos of Emily and her brother Thomas that are kept here in the Library.

For more on Vita Sackville-West, on Sissinghurst and on how this delightful and amusing family connection is commemorated click here to go to the relevant page of our new website.