Who said January was quiet ?

 

 

 

One job that we recently carried out was removing an ornamental vine, which over the years had reached gigantic proportions, in as much as it had worked its way right to the top of one of our yews. Whilst it looks beautiful in the autumn, it was beginning to smother the Yew and there comes a time when the negatives simply outweigh the positives. With loppers, saws and secateurs in hand we managed to wrestle this ungainly climber to the ground. Looking at the photos below you can clearly see what we were up against and how much vegetation we then had to dispose of.

 

 

Work also started in cutting back our herbaceous borders, habitually starting with the smaller border which we refer to as June border.

 

 

 

 

 

It is worth mentioning that not all of our work is confined to working on our main site but to also undertake work on our outside accommodation properties in North Oxford. For example, the first four photos below show before and after photos of work that was carried out removing the Ivy, digging out brambles and more importantly removing the pile of rubbish which included bricks, bikes, broken branches which had accumulated  at the back of 20-44 Rawlinson Road.

 

 

Equally important is ensuring that our gardens surrounding our 145/147 Woodstock Road  property are  also kept clean and tidy. Once again, we have included a few before and after photos, together with a few others of what was achieved that day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having lifted all our summer Dahlias from our Cardinal Newman borders, we prepared the site for replanting. The borders were forked over and levelled. Strings were laid out before planting out with Scottish Thistles or to be more precise Onorpordum acanthium. This beautiful biennial (taking two years to complete its biological life cycle)  reaches a height of at least 2 metres. I always think that this is one of those plants a bit like marmite. You either love them or hate them! Fortunately for us, and based on past experience of when we have  grown them before, the vast majority of visitors absolutely adore them.

 

Pictured below is a photo I took back during our 2014 Summer Ball, which clearly shows off the thistles at their best. Even our visiting Zebra was impressed.

 

 

 

We are currently cutting down the larger of the two herbaceous borders, pruning the last of the roses and will be shortly pruning the wisterias in and around the college. I have to say that this is just a snap shot of what we are currently doing and I will update this post in a couple of weeks allowing you to see what  the herbaceous border looks like once they have been fully cut back.