Behind closed doors...

It surprises many of our visitors that we close our doors at the end of September. Our last day of opening was warm, sunny and busy and the repeated message was a surprised, ‘I had no idea you close next week, I presumed you’d be open all year round’. Why, they muse, do you not squeeze out the autumnal pound; sell pumpkin soup, charge a fiver for a kick through the leaves in the woods, pocket a fee for a turn of the apple press and entice your staff to dress up in Halloween costumes for a bit of seasonal fun? Why not indeed.

Many excellent, horticulturally-led businesses rely on the appeal of autumnal festivities to keep their financial head above water at a time when plant sales plummet. Good on them. In truth, I have no magic money tree either and we could always do with a late flurry of income, but close we must and thus eke out our summer income through the leaner months as best we can.

As to ‘why’, we have no natural footfall here, being several miles from any towns of size, with no passing trade to speak of. Between April and September we rely on a kind of unfathomable alchemy, some invisible, collective desire on the part of a few thousand people to come here to see the gardens, or the bluebells, buy plants, meet friends, to be a part of something happening. In October, that collective sense of ‘happening’ vanishes with the shortening days and we fall quiet. Many years’ experience has proved the pointlessness of leaving the urn on ‘just in case’, the electricity bill exceeding the brew income, and so we close, except for online sales, ‘Click and Collect’, and trade orders.

I suppose we could make some kind of effort to extend our open season, but I have no innate appetite for attempting to roll stones uphill, Sisyphean-style. I’d rather go with the natural order of things and find another way forward. And there is plenty to do in the absence of visitors - there is seed to collect and sow, thousands of plants to cut back, split and pot up, repairs to complete and perhaps most important of all, rest to be taken.

As for me, at the autumn equinox, that exact moment when mythical Perspephone tears herself away from Demeter again and heads underground to spend yet another six months with Hades, the garden and I both feel a strong need to turn inwards too, to close the doors, to retreat, reflect and restore ourselves. It’s absolutely necessary.

And so we turn our focus to quiet, steady plant production, lifting plants from the garden to re-invigorate them and to produce stock for next year. Some of the plants we have used for our show displays are ageing too and in need of refreshing, like this Hakonechloa macra ‘Aurola’.

The plant looks alright at first sight, but the centre of the rootball is like concrete and it’s full of moss - it won’t produce a fine display on our stands next year. So this is what we do - saw off the bottom two inches, saw it in half and then into pieces. It looks brutal, but it opens up the plant and encourages new root and shoot growth in the centre. Here we’ve used about half of the old plant to produce a new show plant and the other half will make a dozen or so new plants for stock too.

Wish us luck, we only have another 150 or so show plants to work our way through :-)

The online shop is open all year round of course - we will keep despatching all the while our plants look good and the ground is workable. By the way, we have an excellent offer on at the moment for the delightful Geum ‘Mai Tai’ (see picture above..).

These things keep us going, along with the cheery daily conversation and laughter among our merry little band as we go about our days here. This, and the plants still flowering their socks off despite the rain, and the tiny signs of new life already showing in some of the pots will keep body and soul together until spring.

From the top, reading left to right: Aster ‘Winston Churchill, Canna - possibly ‘Wyoming’, Persicaria affinis ‘Superba’, Geranium wlassovianum leaf, Helenium ‘Sahin’s Early Flowerer’, Aster ‘Acturus’, Hydrangea ‘Limelight’, Cyclamen hederifolium, Salvia ‘Naomi Tree’.

A Paeony bud, just emerging - a reassuring sign of readiness for next year.

The promise of life next year is one thing, but I hear some people have early snowdrops out. Now that is a step much too far. I shall happily wait until January to see mine.