Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2012 | Page 91

Gardening
with Toby Beasley

Toby Beasley, head gardener at Osborne House, brings Island Life readers
up to date with what has been happening in the famous gardens – and
beyond - in his regular column.

Toby writes: We gardeners are always
keeping an eye on the weather much
the same as farmers and for that
matter any other outdoor trade. It
can have positive effects for us; the
predominantly dry days through
November helped us plant the bedding
on the terraces in double quick time
this year but we still had enough rain
to water in the bare rooted wallflowers.
However, just recently we have seen
some of the negative effects of the
weather with spells of gale force wind
either side of Christmas. Thankfully,
the four trees we had down in the
wind were located in the wider estate
and not within the garden. None was
a significantly historic tree the oldest
was probably no more than 70 years
old.
Things like this do put a spanner
in the works for us, though. Two of
the trees had fallen across the access
track to our compost heaps, so two
gardeners had to spend a few days
cutting and moving wood. Fallen trees
are a very obvious result of gales, but

we had so much twiggy debris blowing
around the garden that for two weeks
after the last gale we had to spend
plenty of time raking twigs, taking us
away from the jobs we had planned.
On the positive side at least all the
leaves are off the trees now, so the end
of the leaf raking is in sight.
I don’t need to tell you that
temperatures have been far milder than
usual this winter and this has been
highlighted by how early some plants
have come into bloom. Our camellias
normally start to flower in February,
but on the terraces they were in flower
mid-December. We have had daffodils
in flower before Christmas and the
odd rhododendron as well when we
would normally expect them to bloom
in April.
Health-wise, I’m sure these plants
will be fine but what does the spring
hold in stock for us in terms of flower
displays? If plants come into flower
over a longer than usual period it
may well dilute the impact of the
rhododendron flower display, for

example.
Instead of being a sea of colour in
April and May we may just have odd
rhododendron flowering every so often
from January onwards. Who knows,
perhaps we shouldn’t worry but just
accept it as a quirk of nature and enjoy
the flowers that bloom when we see
them.
The cold, wet, generally miserable
weather that we often get in January
does force us inside more often than
we would like. However, we have
turned this to our advantage and
January has become our scheduled
planning month. We have finalised
our plans and placed our order for the
summer b VFF