Gardening Group

Jackwood House Garden

12th September 2025

In between the showers on Friday afternoon, five of our intrepid volunteers met at Jackwood House Garden to tidy up a little.

With the change in weather over the last month and the changing season, the garden is changing too. A good number of the early flowering plants are putting up new shoots from the base, several of the grasses look like they’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards and a few things have just fallen over entirely. In the central bed, it looks like a dog or a fox has gotten into a fight and knocked many plants over.

Jackwood House Garden in need of a late summer tidy by FOW volunteers

We spent a pleasant couple of hours working through the beds (and a little bit of time sheltering in the alcove). We took out weeds, thinned out dead heads, combed grasses and cut back a couple of herb species - our volunteers are now well supplied with oregano and hyssop for a good long while. As ever, our dense planting held some surprises for us - a meter tall bright yellow 'something' had hidden from our previous weeding sessions.

One of our volunteers brought up their tool kit and some netting, and did some repair work to one of the bug hotels. Hopefully, we should have fewer pine cones escaping now.

It’s such a relief, though, to have the rain back - we managed to get through the summer without mass watering, but it was close and not all the plants were happy about it. We’ll likely have a few adjustments to make. We did add in a few more young plants this session. There were, inevitably, some plants that didn't take well enough to make it through the first winter. What we planted this week were cuttings and seedlings grown on over the summer to replace the ones lost.

There are some plants that are showing off very nicely at the moment. The iceplants (hylotelephium), one of the bistorts, and the anemones are all providing a happy contrast to the grasses and the dead heads - we’ll see how long into the autumn they last this year!

As one of our volunteers pointed out, it has now been almost exactly a year since we planted - and its such a difference!  Thanks so much to everyone who has worked on creating and maintaining the space, and to everyone who treats it with respect as they pass by!