It’s a busy time in the garden at Glenarm as we prepare the garden for the coming season. We are planting several new hedges this year. One of the charms of the garden is that nothing is square and so nothing truly aligns. This eccentricity can only be overcome by applying the principle that if it looks right, it is right. It took a great deal of trial and error to align the new cruciform hedge of Euonymus alatus ‘Compacta’ in the Apple Orchard, but it is finally in. This low hedge will give this otherwise rather wild garden an air of formality and will really come into its own when the leaves turn a virulent pink in the autumn!
Another low hedge of Berberis thunbergii ‘Orange Alf’ has gone in under the step-over apple trees, which will give the vegetable garden a colourful formal boundary. The new growth is bright pink and the small leaves are pink with a golden margin, making the hedge look orange from afar.
The winter gales have been quite damaging this year and one of the charming old eighteenth century lime trees was blown over near the castle. Outside the glass range, the lemons were blown over and their pots smashed, so we have replanted them and are using a weekly foliar feed of liquid seaweed extract to green them up for the season.
For the first time, our fairly small Pineapple Guava, Acca sellowiana from Brazil and Argentina, has produced a crop of small fruits. These fruits don’t yet look very appetizing but still, it’s better than nothing! Perhaps they may be edible later on in the year.
