Last week I decided to give the Medlar tree in the Cook’s garden some much needed attention to open the crown and let light in to the bed. It hadn’t been pruned for a few years and I have never pruned a tree in my life, so it was challenging to say the least. But with some help from our lovely volunteer Jill, I managed just fine. We plucked up the courage to cut back each gangly, long branch to an upward facing side-shoot, which would allow that to become the new leader. However, as lovely as the tree looks now, I’m somewhat discouraged from eating its fruit. They’re interestingly shaped, quite similar to a rose hip, but apparently they need to be left alone to rot or ‘blet’, which I find off-putting. I would however like to try making a medlar cheese, which is supposedly like lemon curd.
Matt, Claire and I have been learning tree identification of British species for our diploma, and in a week’s time we’ll have to identify twelve species at random for our assessor. I find identification really enjoyable, as it requires you to pay a great deal of attention to characteristics of the tree that would normally be overlooked, such as leaf arrangement. I’ve since begun obsessively staring up at trees that I normally wouldn’t have noticed, blending in with the backdrop to the gardens.
Last Friday I was really excited to see my garden on BBC Gardeners World, for a piece on green manures. The day before they filmed, I frantically tidied up areas of the Compost Display Garden ready for the camera, and everyone helped me spread new woodchip on the paths. I was beaming with pride when I actually saw it on TV…just wish I’d recorded it!
