The Open Garden Scheme – Getting My Garden Ready

My lovely village of Langford in the Cotswolds is taking part in the open garden scheme next Sunday. And for some mad reason I agreed to open my garden as part of the event.

I say ‘mad’ as I must confess my nerves are jangling. Will there be any flowers left on the roses? Will people ignore the state of my lawn? Oh no that section of acer is dying! Will any of the oriental poppies which have miraculously grown this year, still be in bloom next Sunday? What about that massive gap in the sunny border?

These are just some of the many things racing through my head!

Open Garden Scheme – I’m taking part and panicking!

So I thought I’d share with you the last few jobs I’m doing during the build-up to the open garden scheme. Not least because they’re the quick fix jobs I’d advise anyone to focus on if they want to get their garden ‘visitor-ready’ for a big occasion.

Open Garden Scheme Preparations -10 jobs

• Mowing
• Edging
• Deadheading
• Feeding roses
• Feeding patio pots
• Tidying pots
• Don’t forget the front!
• Sweet Pea sort out
• Showing off foliage plants
• Plugging gaps

1. Open Garden Scheme Grass Means Mowing

Like hoovering your carpets in the home, I think mowing and edging your lawn instantly makes the rest of your garden look really ship-shape. So I’ll give the whole area a mow on Friday or Saturday a bit ahead of Sunday’s visitors.

Mowing also disguises the fact that a lot of my ‘lawn’ isn’t grass at all. As my ‘No Mow May’ experience has shown, I think it’s 90% daisies!!

Frankly, I don’t mind that at all. I’m not that fussed about having a pristine lawn and don’t have the patience to maintain manicured grass. When it’s cut and edged, I think the expanse looks pretty good and it shows off the flowerbeds. That’s good enough for me.

Our ‘grass’ runs straight up to many of our borders. If I mow right to the edges I risk chopping off precious flowers. So I do the final 6 inches of lawn near the borders by hand. It’s a bit of a faff but well worth it.

2. Edging

While doing this I will also edge the lawn. Edging makes a tremendous difference. So it definitely features on my list of jobs if you want to get your garden visitor (or open garden scheme) ready.

We have a really good half-moon shaped tool for edging our lawn. I think Mr F-W bought it on eBay. That said, a spade works pretty well.

Edging the lawn gives everything a really polished look.

However I resist doing it too often as there’s a risk my borders get a little bit bigger every time I do it. I have definitely gained a foot over the years on my sunny border thanks to ‘edging.’ And while I don’t mind this too much, after all it’s an excuse to pop in yet more plants, I’m not sure Mr F-W is too pleased about me gradually expanding all the borders by stealth!

Where our lawn meets a stone wall, it’s particularly tricky to get things looking tidy, as the mower can’t get that close to the wall. So this year I’ve decided to keep the grass next to the walls long. It’s beneficial for insects to have some long grass (I also keep long patches under some trees). And I think the contrast of long and short grass actually makes the short grass look even sharper! So it’s a win win and well worth considering.

3. Deadheading

I don’t know if you’ve found this, but in my garden the roses have bloomed really early this year. They’re looking fantastic. But I fear that, rather like a firework display, the show of flowers won’t last. All the blooms will be gone before we get to next Sunday and the open garden scheme!

The secret with roses is undoubtedly to regularly deadhead. This certainly helps keep the blooms coming. I’m pretty good at systematically doing it. That’s probably because I find it a very restful job to do each evening after work as I wander around the garden. So I’d well recommend it as a habit to get in to and it’s definitely a great way to quickly tidy up the garden.

As I deadhead the roses I will also remove any leaves with black spot. This not only helps prevent the black spot from spreading but mean the roses will look in good shape for the open garden scheme visitors. If you do this too, remember not to dispose of the leaves on your compost heap. You need to put them in your garden refuse bin. After all, you don’t want to be spreading a compost full of black spot all over your garden.

4. Feeding Roses

Part of my regime for preventing black spot on the roses is to ensure they remain as healthy and vigorous as possible. That means feeding. I put some slow release granular feed down around the base of my roses back in March/early April. Taking care that the granuals weren’t near the roses’ stems. But for the past year, on the advice of my lovely neighbour Desi, I’ve also been using special rose tonic called  Uncle Tom.

It comes in a very old-fashioned looking bottle which I rather like. And with Uncle Tom a little goes a very long way! You dilute it as a ratio of 1:100! It absolutely scrambles my head trying to work this out but it’s worth persevering. You either drench the soil around your rose to give it a boost or you spray it on the leaves or drench them.

I do this every 2 weeks, religiously. Having done it for the past year I can definitely report that the black spot on my roses is much much better this year. So part of my build up for the open garden scheme will be to feed my roses. Just to give them the best possible chance of looking good.

Getting my Pots Open Garden Scheme Ready

I have a large number of pots in the garden. The advantage of containers is they provide instant impact and you can move them around very easily, adjusting the heights and combinations until the effect is just right. The down side of all this instant and eye-catching stuff is that if your pots don’t look good, people soon notice. You may be able to hide the odd tired container, but if you’ve over 90 of them ‘Houston, you’ve a real problem!’ So I take a lot of care to ensure my pots are in tip top-shape. And I’ll double-down on this care during the build-up to the open garden scheme.

5. Feeding Patio Pots

So this week I’ll give every pot a feed – I use a liquid tomato feed. It’s important to feed the plants in containers as their source of nutrients is confined to what’s in the pot. If you used a regular peat-free potting compost when originally planting the container, that will have lost its nutritional oomph after about 6 weeks. So those plants in pots are relying on you to feed them.

To ease the load, this year I popped some slow release granular feed into the containers in spring, when I refreshed the top few inches of compost in the pots. But as extra back up I’m still feeding the containers with the tomato feed every week or so and I’ll give them all a feed this afternoon.

6. Tidying the Pots!

As part of my patio pot routine ahead of the open garden scheme I’ll tidy up what’s in the pots too. I’ll remove dead leaves and straggly bits. I’ll also turn the pots so their best side is facing people.

I may remove fading flowers on my clematis – although I like to leave a few of the fluffy heads for the birds. Unlike with roses, deadheading doesn’t help clematis bloom more in my experience, but it does make the plants look healthier.

I’ve some clematis in containers which are looking a bit lack-lustre. So, to distract the visitor from that, I’ll pop one of my favourite plants, erigeron, into the base of the pots. I may add something else in those containers too as a last minute fix – perhaps some cheap and cheerful bedding plants.

But if I do I’ll remember to give those clematis an extra feed as they will be competing with even more plants for the nutrients in the containers’ soil.

7. Don’t Forget the Front

I find it’s all too easy to neglect the front garden – especially if your back garden is where you spend most time. However the front garden is where that first impression is made. So if you’re expecting important visitors or are taking part in the open garden scheme your front garden needs to be on your list of jobs.

At the moment the front of our cottage is looking a bit of a mess. Our bearded irises which were phenomenal have been and gone. (They are blasted by the sun.) Also the rose on the front of our cottage is an early flowerer. It was blooming at full throttle and now it’s lost a lot of its oomph. So I need to artfully make the front look more interesting.

To do this I’ll take extra care to make sure the pots at the front of our cottage are looking good and I may move a few from the back garden to the front, to create a bit more interest.

I’ll also give our gravel path an extra weed – especially as the rain will have given the weeds as well as the flowers a boost! If we’ve time and energy, we may fling some fresh gravel down.

8. Sweet Pea Sort Out

I’ve sweet peas growing up wigwams in containers. I planted the seeds in October indoors and over-wintered the seedlings. The idea behind this was to give me an early crop of sweet peas and it has definitely worked. I’ve had bunches for a few weeks now and new flowers are coming into bloom every day.

Up to now I’ve been methodically tying in the stems to encourage nice straight stemmed flowers and cutting off the tendrils. But the wigwams still look a bit ramshackle. So I’ll tidy them up.

I’ve also been picking the flowers every day to encourage flowering. As the last thing you want is your sweet peas going to seed. However, for the open garden scheme the wigwams will look a bit sad if they’re all green with no flowers on them. So I’ll stop picking on today. That will give them a week to ‘flower up’ nicely.

9. Showing Off Foliage Plants

I’ve a lot of hostas in the garden. And with any plant which has impactful leaves, you want to show them off to their best advantage. So in readiness for next Sunday I’m going to go round the garden checking on them. I’ll remove any badly munched leaves and just clear things a little around the hostas so they’ve room to ‘perform.’

For instance, I’ve lots of primroses in the beds. With the primrose flowers long gone, these are now just a mass of leaves. Normally I’d leave them be. But for the open garden scheme, where the primroses are detracting from the hostas, I’ll move a few of them (I’ll probably put them into pots and pop them back into the garden later). I’ll also pull out the dead and straggly daffodil leaves – though normally I’d probably let them be for a bit longer.

Equally I’ll ensure my lovely lines of variegated tiarellas (Emerald Ellie), ferns and hostas in my shaded bed – where it’s really all about the leaves and white planting – are in good view and are looking their best.

10. Plugging Gaps

As I go round the garden I can see the odd gap. Most of these I won’t worry about as we’re only in June and the plants will soon spread and fill the spaces. I don’t want to create an overcrowding problem simply to have a bed which looks full next Sunday.

However, there’s a major gap at the front of my sunny border. This is adjacent to our patio and almost the first thing people will see when they come into our back garden. The gap is a genuine one – my lovely Mexican Feathergrass which stood proudly in the border has sadly died. They don’t tend to last very long and he was five years old. So has had a good innings. However, I do need to plug this gap.

I’m not sure whether to simply get another grass or go for something different. A dome shaped shrub – perhaps a small hebe – such as Hebe Margret – might work nicely in the gap. Providing a bit of structure among all the wildness. I’m going to head to the garden centre and see if inspiration strikes!

Open Garden Scheme – Do Join Us!

So that’s it, my checklist of jobs to get my garden ready for next Sunday 12th June . Mine will be one of 25 gardens large and small, formal and cottagey, open in our lovely Cotswold village as part of the NGS open garden scheme. Indeed, our village of Langford in Oxfordshire has one of the biggest collection of gardens you can visit in one go – and entry is just £7.50 (children are free)!

So if you live anywhere near us please do come along. The village is 30 minutes from Cheltenham, Swindon and Oxford. (We’re right on the Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire border so easily accessible to lots of people). We’re on the edge of the Cotswolds and in addition to the gorgeous gardens there will be teas, cakes, a plant stall and a monster raffle. The gardens are open from 2pm-6pm and there will be plenty of easy parking. Simply stick GL73LN in your satnav.

If you are coming along, let me know in the comments below, so I can welcome you properly and give you a tour of my garden. Hope to see lots of you on Sunday. Till then happy gardening X