AUTUMN IN THE ABBOTSFORD GARDENS

We’re coming towards the end of the season in the Abbotsford gardens and the garden team have been working hard to make sure we get the most out of everything in the garden. Head Gardener Tim talks through what the team have been up to.

We’ve been busy harvesting the many varieties of both eating and cooking apples from our trees in the kitchen garden including Bloody Ploughman, Lemon Queen, White Melrose and Stobo Castle.

As well as various vegetables including onions, swede, cabbage and cauliflower. We’re continuing to sell Abbotsford produce in the visitor centre shop and the apples in particular have been very popular!

We're tidying up the garden for the end of the season too, cutting back many of our annual plants. We’ll also be propagating some of our plants to over winter in the greenhouse and plant next year including Delphiniums, Day Lillies and Hostas. We hope to be able to sell some of these to visitors in early summer 2021.

Looking ahead to next year, we’re beginning to plant lots of Spring bulbs such as daffodils and tulip mixes including World Friendship, Spring Green and Green Mile for the espalier borders. Alliums for grass including Nigrum, Pink Jewel and Mercurius along with Fritillaria Meleagris which we’re planting in the orchard within the kitchen garden. Allium Schubertii, Allium Violet Beauty for the perennial borders, along with Allium Sphaerocephalon and a mixture of naturalising bulbs for the morris garden including Puschkinia Libanotica, Narssisi Topolino, Camassia Alba and Muscari Latifolium.

We’ve also been working with the Galashiels Rotary Club to plant 4000 crocus bulbs for World Polio Day which was October 24^th in recognition of the End Polio Now campaign.

Once all the vegetables have been harvested, we’ll start preparing the vegetable beds for next year. Our other ongoing work from November will including feeding and scarifying the lawns and caring for our roses with bone meal and organic matter.