September in the Abbotsford Gardens

As we come into Autumn, Head Gardener Tim talks through what’s been happening in the Abbotsford gardens.

The garden team are busy beginning to harvest the produce from the kitchen garden. A changing variety of fruits and vegetables are for sale in the gift shop, some are given to Ochiltree’s café on site to be used in lunches and the gardens even supply Selkirk Distillers with the botanicals to make our Abbotsford gin (also on sale in the gift shop).

Our wonderful team of garden volunteers have recently been busy helping with routine dead heading and pruning to extend the flowering season into the autumn, ensuring the gardens look colourful for our visitors for as long as possible. At present, the borders are still full of colour and fragrance with the Dahlias in particular providing beautiful vibrant flowers.

Other jobs on the horizon this season include autumn bulb planting, with varieties of Tulip through areas of the walled garden providing drifts of spring colour. We will be adding to our bulb planting from last autumn in the Morris Garden and South Court. We aim to create a successional colour scheme and the early spring flowering bulbs such as Muscaria, Scilla and Puschkinia lead into colourful displays of Tulips and Daffodils, followed by Alliums and Camassia.

We’ve also been working on our new Mindfulness Garden, which we’re opening as part of Sir Walter Scott’s 250^th anniversary celebrations. This will sit in a sunny corner of the Morris Garden and include a water feature which we’re currently installing.