Legacy Planting - May in the Lewis Cottage Garden

Legacy Planting -  May in the Lewis Cottage Garden

At Lewis Cottage, near Spreyton, they have been planting trees to fill the gaps along the drive to their beautiful garden. In the process Richard Orton noticed up to 30 plants that had self-seeded along this stretch of their land. Here he urges us to take time to notice what’s already in our gardens and shares his tips for jobs to be doing this month.

Sometimes I think of what I would like to leave as a gardening legacy. My family and friends have suggested that they each buy a tree to line our drive. The drive is the only way to the cottage and it was lined top to bottom with a mixture of oak, ash, hazel, birch and hawthorn, but many of these have fallen through storm or disease over the last 30 years. The remaining oaks and a majestic beech are an autumn focal point.

But there are big gaps and the drive hasn’t seemed the same. Being able to replant the whole drive with gifts filled me with hope and my only condition was that the trees should be perceived as native. Already I have a chestnut, a couple of crab apples and a mountain ash, and it seems that a few more are expected.

The hedgerow along each side of the drive was renovated recently and it was time to take a stroll along it to mark out where the trees should go. The drive is nice enough, with hedges on both sides, daffodils in the spring, and pretty floriferous the rest of the year.

It is a part of the garden that often gets overlooked and it’s amazing what can easily be missed: purple comfrey for instance (a welcome interloper courtesy of the local birdlife I suspect) a patch of lamium orvala, and atop the hedge, symphytum hidcote blue has begun to colonise a space now open to the light, and further along a large patch of greater stitchwort.

Here is a list of all I found: wood sage, yellow archangel, common vetch, greater celandine, honeysuckle, maidenhair spleenwort, primrose, bluebell, three-cornered garlic, wood avens, winter aconite, lily of the valley, lords-and-ladies, male and lady ferns, hard fern (Blechnum spicant), hart’s tongue fern, foxglove, dog violet, enchanter’s nightshade, columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris), black-leaved cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris, Ravenswing). That’s around 30 different varieties of plants in as many metres that have found their own way there. Sometimes leaving a space to define itself is the best choice to make and all we need do is take time to notice.

Tips for the coming month

• Plant out summer bedding plants once the risk of frost has passed.
• Ventilate your greenhouse or polytunnel.
• Water early or late in the day and collect and recycle water wherever possible.
• Harden off half-hardy plants by leaving them outside during the day and bringing them in at night.
• Divide border perennials and hostas to improve the vigour of the parent plant and increase your stock.
• Prune back old stems on penstemons to new growth or to the first set of leaves.
• Tie in sweet peas.
• Top dress permanent container plants with new compost.
• Thin out direct-sown carrots, spinach and lettuce plants etc.
• Weed onions and garlic to stop competition for nutrients.
• Protect strawberry plants with straw to lift fruits from the soil and reduce weeds.
• Check gooseberry bushes for sawfly caterpillars and remove.
• Weed beds and borders.
• Let spring bulb foliage die down naturally and resist the temptation to cut it all back .
• Plant up summer containers to put outside at the end of the month.

Further information on Lewis Cottage Garden can be found here

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