AUGUST IN THE ABBOTSFORD GARDENS

It’s been amazing to have visitors enjoying our gardens again over the past couple of months. Head gardener Tim updates us on what the team has been up to as we near the end of the season.

After working in a very small team of two through most of lockdown, it’s been great to have our team of volunteers back to help us in the gardens as well as visitors enjoying them again. We’ve had lots of positive feedback from visitors which is great to hear.

The unseasonably wet and windy weather throughout August has presented some challenges. Unfortunately the rain has meant some of the vegetables rotting and some flowers not lasting as long as they might have but we’ve been doing what we can to lessen the impact of the elements. We’ve been busy tying back and staking plants to protect them from the wind and tidying the gardens up after bad weather.

As we’re nearing the end of the season, we’ve been focusing on maintenance in the gardens such as trimming box hedges and deadheading flowers. But we still have plenty of plants flowering through the next month including Nicotiana, Chleome, Ammi Visnaga, Agapanthus and Dahlias.

Despite the weather, we’ve had plenty of good fruit and veg from the kitchen garden which we’ve been able to sell in the visitor centre shop this year. This has included courgettes, radishes, plums and two varieties of potato.

We’re also preparing for next season already. We’ve been planning what the gardens will look like in Spring 2021 and our spring bulbs, including Tulips, Alliums, Chionodoxa, Muscari, Scilla, Pushkinia and Anemone, are already ordered for planting in October and November.

We also have 4000 crocus bulbs coming from Galashiels Rotary Club as part of The Rotary Crocus international fundraiser for the End Polio Now Campaign. Appropriate to Abbotsford as it was after suffering polio as a child in 1773 that Sir Walter Scott was sent from Edinburgh to his grandfather's farm in Roxburghshire where he first developed his life-long love of the Scottish Borders.