The real gardeners diary

The following extracts are taken from an old diary kept by a gardener who was in service. The diary covers the period from 1884 to 1889. We hope to publish weekly extracts from this diary to give an insight into the activities of the period and as notes have been made concerning the weather it is interesting to make comparisons with the prevailing weather conditions we experience today. The handwriting is very difficult to read therefore some of the extracts may be incomplete and seem grammatically odd.





February 2nd 1884

Weather fine at the beginning of the week but stormy and unsettled afterwards. Replanting, digging and clearing ground. Putting in cuttings of ????? and potted fernes (fern)

February 9th 1884

Very dry but dull, a little sun on Monday but not all day. Pot up more cuttings and potted off ????. Re potted Smilax and thing?????? Cineraria's coming into bloom, deutzia, hyacinths and tulips. (presumably under glass)

The Head Gardeners Diary

We have added a new page called the Head Gardeners Diary. This page will contain tips and a jobs for the month article. Please use the link on the left hand side of the page or alternatively click below.

http://ashfurlongwalledkitchengarden.blogspot.com/p/head-gardners-diary.html

long time no post

It's been a long time since we last posted. Time just seems to gallop on. Further clearing work has happened on one of the vegatable quarters but the main focus has been on this years christmas tree sales therefore little progress has been made in the walled garden.

It has been frozen solid and under several inches of snow for over a month now but we are hoping to make more progress in the new year.

Every year we sell top quality fresh christmas trees, holly wreaths and natural decorations. This particular job is all time consuming throughout November and December.

The weather this month has made all work including christmas sales very difficult has we have been rcording tempratures as low as minus 13 degrees C.

We now have some new additions to the menagerie in the form of tropical fish. We now have a selection of moonlight, kissing and pearl gouramis. platy's and neon tetras a schoal of zebra danio's a rather large angel fish and the stars of the show, three catfish. with all of the hundreds of TV channels available with nothing to watch the fish are far more facinating and entertaining.

Succesful crops

Broad Beans

The broad beans are now cropping heavily despite their late sowing.

Climbing Peas

We are now seeing the fruits of a struggle against pigeon and rabbit damage and are now getting a reasonable result from the pea crop.

The new rhubarb beds

The new rhubarb beds planted at the end of April are growing fantastically well. No doubt due to a more than liberal dressing of manure.

The Melon House

The photo's show cucumbers, melons and Achocha growing away happily. the melons are approaching the pollination stage.

Kale and Broccoli

Although it tried to run to seed earlier in the season the Black Kale is now almost ready for harvest and the White sprouting broccoli is growing away well.

The replacement for the old greenhouse

The strange construction in the last post, incidentally named the "bus shelter" has now been replaced with a small aluminium greenhouse, salvaged from a property that we own. Although not of a suitable design at least it will be useful as a propagating house and it is better than the greenhouse being scrapped.

The photo's show the frame constructed and ready for glazing.

The work continues

The following piccies are of a old greenhouse construction, cobbled together a few years ago from some of the parts from one of the original Victorian glasshouses that were on site.

As you can see it had deteriorated into a dangerous mess.

The demolition took quite some time as the glass in the panels is at least a quarter of an inch thick and care was taken to keep as many of the frames as intact as possible to use as templates for any future restoration.

Another one of the menagerie guarding the wheelbarrow.

History of the gardens

we have been requested to publish a post about the history of our gardens. The available info is a bit sketchy so here goes:-

Ashfurlong Hall started life as a medieval / Tudor farm, it was developed into a typical classical regency country residence in 1804 for Thomas Vaughton, High Sheriff of Warwickshire
who had six daughters all born in Sutton Coldfield between 1801 and 1817.

The house has had many owners and occupiers including in 1841 Henry Grimes a Warden of the town 1838-40, in the 1850s Joseph Webster of Penns Mill also Warden, and Thomas Colmore a Birmingham solicitor, also a Warden 1864-66. When Colmore died in 1870 the estate included some 118 acres.
The property was briefly used by a school associated with Trinity College but by 1891 had reverted to residential status when Arthur T Beck was in residence.

A later occupant of Ashfurlong Hall was Colonel J H Wilkinson. He was a wealthy philanthropist who established a Hospital in the town and bought Barr Beacon at the western end of Sutton Chase as a perpetual public memorial for the soldiers of the Staffordshire and Warwickshire regiments who had been killed in World War 1. The dome on Barr Beacon was erected in Wilkinson's memory in 1933.

The latest occupant's prior to its recent sale when the estate was split were EH Moore and his wife he was High Sheriff of the West Midlands county and grandson of ES Moore who established the famous HP sauce company.

The history of the gardens is even more obscure although there is plenty of archaeological evidence and memories dating from the 1960's. The walls surrounding the garden appear to date from the 18th century period although there are what are obviously later Victorian additions. There was an extensive Victorian range of glass houses on the outside of the walls with heating powered by the ubiquitous Robin Hood solid fuel boilers. in addition outside the walls there was a frame yard opposite the glass houses. A summer house and what was presumably the show house was located against the west facing wall. Sadly most of these buildings had reached the state of no return by the 1970's and were demolished. We do have an intriguing building that is not large enough for a potting shed that has a chimney built into the outer wall and we have always wondered what its purpose would have been.

Following world war 2 the gardens became a private nursery and no longer serviced the estate, over recent years the gardens have decayed somewhat and hopefully our project will do the previous gardeners justice.