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The sun shone on all of our courses over the past week and it was great to see so many new as well as familiar faces back at Ketteringham. We had a packed Veg Patch day with a good look at crop rotation and successional sowing as well as what you could be planting and harvesting each month of the year. There was lots to do on the Summer Pruning course, with reversion to be removed from variegated shrubs, pruning of early summer flowering shrubs and expert deadheading of roses to be demonstrated. Finally, we had another lovely Peony & Dahlia Day with glorious Norfolk flowers from English Peonies. It wasn’t just about arranging the flowers – everyone went away having learned how to propagate, plant, nurture and cut these wonderful flowers, as well as something of their place in history.
Courses in September are now filling up, and we are particularly pleased to be running the Certificate in Practical Horticulture on both Wednesdays and Saturdays from mid-September. This is an excellent, highly practical 10-week course which has had great reviews from the first course which started in January and will finish in early August after a lockdown hiatus. We had a mix of interested amateur gardeners, professional gardeners looking for a a qualification and people keen to change their career and get into gardening. All of them have found the course really useful as well as very enjoyable. There are still a few places available on both days if you would like to join us.
Similarly, the very popular Introduction to Garden Design is filling up. It is an 8-week course for which you do not need to have any experience or even any creative skill, just an enthusiasm for learning about garden design, whether for your own garden or for clients.
In the Walled Garden we have been harvesting potatoes, lettuce and kohl rabi and taking lots of semi-ripe cuttings from perennials and shrubs. The greenhouse had begun to empty out but is now filling up again as the cuttings line up on the benches. We have also cut a new border against the south-west wall which we plan to plant over the coming weeks and months using many of the plants we have propagated ourselves. We will undoubtedly be taking cuttings from them to produce more plants on courses over the next year.
Upcoming courses with availability:
Lawn Care & Maintenance 2nd September
What Needs Doing Now 8th September
Introduction to Garden Design (8 week course) 10th September
Composting Made Simple 11th September
The Cutting Garden 15th September
Certificate in Practical Horticulture (10 week course) 16th and 19th September
Botanical and Textural Print Making (6 week course) 28th September
Plant of the Week
Desmodium elegans
Desmodium elegans is a deciduous sub-shrub with trifoliolate leaves and panicles or racemes of small rosy-pink pea-flowers in late summer and autumn. It is part of the Fabaceae (pea) family and grows well in most soils though in colder areas it may require protection from frosts and cold drying winds. The plant was discovered in the Himalayas in 1879 and the name comes from the Greek desmos, a band or chin which refers to the jointed seed pods.
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