EVERY autumn, the team at Waddesdon Manor plants half a million bulbs in only a few short weeks, a task accomplished with help from volunteers and local children. ‘We start in Daffodil Valley,’ says Mike Buffin, head of gardens. ‘This is part of the original Victorian landscape garden, where we aim to plant 40,000 reliably perennial narcissus bulbs in two weeks.’ The team uses a simple recipe containing four persistently perennial daffodil varieties, which will flower from January until April. ‘Heights and flower shapes vary, so it looks very natural.’
The large, open areas are planted with a specially hired bulb-planting machine that allows a huge number of bulbs to be put into the ground quite quickly. ‘The machine lifts the turf and the bulbs slide down both sides of a hopper before being covered up again,’ Mr Buffin explains. Areas that are steeply sided or have tree roots have to be covered with a variety of different hand-held bulb planters. The gardeners make the holes and children from local primary schools help by dropping the bulbs in and covering them back up again. ‘Some holes are made mechanically with a clever piece of equipment, designed to cut holes in golfing greens. The aim is to plant each bulb at twice its depth.’
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der September 15, 2021-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der September 15, 2021-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
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Forever a chorister
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Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
