Head Gardener Spring Update

Spring is here.

In the gardening world, each year there is a debate on when is spring, “when do you plant out your potatoes” or “is that the last frost”. These conversations date back centuries and am sure that these will carry on being the topic on many gardeners’ radars in the years to come too. 

Its mid-March at Trentham and I would definitely say that spring has sprung. The hellebores, snowdrops and hazels which have provided us with great winter colour and fragrance are now giving way as the whole Gardens seems to be coming to life. The newly planted roses in our David Austin Rose Border are shooting, our daffodils are blooming, oxlips are flowering away and the tulips for our Spring Bulb Festival are ready to pop. We have been working this winter behind the scenes with our marketing and events team on making our Bulb Festival a little more engaging for all. That with the Shaun the Sheep trail in the gardens is setting up for an inspiring, busy and fun filled spring and easter for all. We are currently just in the process of moving all the bulb pots from our back of house to the main gardens. Frustratingly so it seems that the squirrels too have been enjoying our pots over the winter! It seems that no amount of chicken wire can keep those pesky squirrels away from our bulbs. Nevertheless, they didn’t feast on all of them! Whilst our tulip potted displays don’t disappoint each spring, over the past few years, a conscious effort has been around planting more and more naturalising bulbs into the ground. Already in mid-March we are starting to see the benefits of this. A large recent part of our sustainable approach to planting is our Bluebell Meadow Project on the West Lakeside. In Autumn 2024 we started this project with a tractor mounted machine bulb planter planting up our first phase of this. Its still quite early to see bluebells (at the time of writing this) but we all will be paying close attention to seeing how this area develops.  

Our Upper Flower Garden Project has now been planted up with the last of the plants going in with thanks to Strathmore College early March. The design intention for this was to give some added vibrancy and colour to the garden. The Italian Garden Team designed this and chose a simple, repeated palette of plants across all the 6 beds include herbaceous like Crocosmia, Epimedium, Kniphofia and Rudbeckia will add great colour and foliage while a few shrubs like Cornus, Cotinus and Hydrangeas dotted through will give structure right through the winter. So out with the old box hedging and cobbles and in with a range of herbaceous and shrubs. I say ‘out with the old cobbles’ like it was an easy task – it certainly wasn’t and am sure John, Roisin and volunteers/groups will be glad to never see them again. It certainly was a thankless task lifting them into crates (that is when they weren’t frozen), pressure washing them off and repurposing them round the fountain. A standout for me in this project was seeing so many come together and play a part, from the removing the cobbles, cleaning them, raking the beds, mulching and planting – I would like to say thanks to Reaseheath College, Strathmore College, LANDAU, Duke Street Day Care and Futures Together who have all rolled their sleeves up and got stuck in! We hope you will enjoy watching the border develop and mature as much as we do.

As you can imagine from a garden of Trentham’s scale, our spring job list is never ending. As the soil warms, the grass now needs cutting, and those pesky weeds are emerging and need getting on top of early before the herbaceous plants really take hold. This spring we are having a concerted effort in our East and West Pleasure Grounds in terms of refreshing our current planting. On our East Side, Mark and Iain are getting a real grasp of Piet Oudolf’s original plans for The Floral Labyrinth. Whilst the plans are over 20 years old, with some plants now being harder to source, the Floral Labyrinths design theme and intention still stands the test of time and our current concerted will, hopefully, ensure that this continues to be the case into the future. Over the winter gone, they have cleared patches, got plant lists sent to nurseries, as well as existing content split and divided. Now into spring, we are at the exciting stage of getting those new plants back in there. The keen eyed amongst you will spot our little markers in the ground denoting these patches.

In our Show Gardens on our West Side, Jolene and Paul have finished their winter works focused on tidying, cutting back and path works. They have been into our onsite Blue Diamond Garden Centre and purchased a variety of plants, shrubs and edibles that will be planted throughout the gardens and potager to help increase the interest in there.

Round the Lakeside, Mike and Ethan have finished their winter pruning and clearing works, now their focus is turning to weed management of those early emerging weeds. Its exciting to see the kingfisher planting beds on the East Lakeside developing with the hellebores and bulb layer flowering away in their first season. The beavers too have been lending a helping hand round the lake, doing what we intended them to do and removing some of the sycamore, alder and willow coppicing round the lake, which is normally a task for the gardeners or estates team.

Not necessarily horticulture, but a large part of the gardens and wider teams focus of late has been on our new interpretation across the gardens and wider estate. This has given us the opportunity to refresh the information we are telling, whilst being an opportunity to tell new stories.

And on to our main focus for the gardens team – The Next Chapter Project in the Italian Garden. This Project is in collaboration with Tom Stuart-Smith where we are replanting our Lower Italian Garden in 3 phases. We are still on track to plant up Phase 1, the northern third this autumn. We have received the final plans/schedules from Tom Stuart-Smith and are currently in talks with various stakeholders in terms of procurement, inspections etc. The emphasis of the design is on very stable, long lived, colourful perennials which are more resilient to the vagaries of climate, dry summers and wet winters in particular, than was the original planting. Over the next few months, you will see us removing the old planting layer and bringing in a layer of coarse sand/grit – of which we will plant into later in the year. This approach will help plants be more reliant to winter wet and summer drought while at the same time discouraging invasive weeds. It is going to be a busy and exciting year in terms of physically implementing the start of this very innovative project. 

So, time to enjoy the spring sunshine. The mornings are still a little fresh, but when that sun is shining in the Gardens – there isn’t many other places I would rather be.

Photo Highlights