Cherrie's Garden Notes
What better way to spend a September morning than strolling round a country garden in the early autumn sunshine talking about plants.
That’s just what we were doing during the week in the lovely County Down garden of Mervyn Warrington, the current chairman of Comber and District Horticultural Society.
It’s showtime in Comber this weekend as the annual horticultural show does it’s lovely thing.
Local church halls will be transformed into veritable plant-fests in celebration of all things horticultural with baking, handicrafts, honey, eggs, jam, painting, photography and children’s classes getting a look in too.
Everything from “Flowers in a Welly Boot” to “ Six Fuschias in a Box” to “Six pods of peas” (grown to perfection) on display to inspire all comers.
The inspiration on our stroll around Mervyn’s garden came from the rolling landscape, the mature trees and the bright colours of the late summer planting.
And in the vegetable garden a bed of lavender was busy with bees as were the sunflowers, which have sprouted everywhere thanks to the birds and the sunflower seeds which Mervyn feeds them.
The countryside around Camlough is just as lovely, if a little more rugged and that’s where Finbar and Kathleen O’Brien are making a new garden in the hills outside the village.
It’s been a while since our last visit and, as before, Maurice Parkinson came with us, this time armed with some great advice for helping Kathleen and Finbar to extend the garden by creating a new bed and by making new plants from old.
This is particularly useful when you have space to fill and if you have larger established plants, which will lend themselves to division. This is a great time of year, when plants still have some colour and form to see what you might like more of and where, so that’s what we set about doing ... or rather that’s what Maurice set about doing as we looked on while he tackled a plant and stony ground with relish.
The plant in question was a fulsome clump of Astrantia, which lent itself well to the process.
Most of the plant was left alone, flower heads and foliage remaining while a substantial corner of the plant was cut back, dug up and re-located to elsewhere in the border to extend the colour pattern and the palette of plants. The critical thing, once re-planted, as Maurice reminded us, is to water well.
Water is the key element in a new very special garden which has recently been opened a Horizon House, the Childrens’ Hospice in Belfast.
The “Quiet Garden” is an extension of an original garden created there some years ago as a special place where parents and families could go to remember a child who has died.
The childrens’ names are written on individual stones which lie just below the surface of the water of the garden pools.
Behind the creation of these gardens of reflection is Greenfingers UK, a charity dedicated to realising hospice gardens around the British Isles.
And working alongside Greenfingers UK, were local landscape designers, skilled labour, the business community and willing volunteers.
You can find out more about Greenfingers at www.greenfingerscharity.org.uk and Horizon House at www.hospicecare.com
