January has flown by here in the gardens. We have had a little snow and a touch of frost but that hasn’t put off the bulbs and it looks as if spring is already on the way. We have daffodils, snowdrops, cyclamen, hellebores and witch hazel already flowering around the grounds. Our daffodil avenue is a real show stopper and it’s well worth a visit just to see that. The spring bulbs are a welcome splash of colour around the gardens, and we are adding to the collection every year. It’s the time of year for renovation and replanting in the gardens. We are pruning some of our overgrown shrub beds and moving some of the overcrowded plants. The start of the year is always busy for us as we try to get things in place for the new tourist season. We have just received an order of semi-mature trees for various areas around the estate. We are also in the process of resurfacing all of our woodland paths with newly chipped bark and mulching the shrub beds with old bark chips and compost. Nothing gets wasted here! One project that’s currently in development is our Stumpery. It is coming together nicely and we have started to plant up some of the pockets with ferns. A new path is also under construction which will link it to the Herbaceous Border. Another ongoing project is the clearance of laurel and rhododendron ponticum in our woodland. These are both very invasive and completely smother any of our native woodland plants. By clearing them we give our woodlands a chance to recover and hope to see encouraging results over the next few years. There are a lot of jobs to do over the next few weeks in preparation for spring. We have already put in our indoor early potatoes and are about to start sowing seeds including tomatoes, peppers, indoor salad crops, leeks, sweet pea and assorted bedding plants for this year’s displays. Put in shallots and garlic now if you didn’t do it in the autumn. We have just pruned our grape vines and also applied a winter wash made from sulphur, lamp oil and soap. This helps with pests and diseases. Winter pruning of fruit trees should be finished as soon as possible. Do not prune stone fruit such as plums or peaches in the winter. Leave this for spring and summer. Roses should also be pruned back in the next few weeks. It’s never too early to mow the lawn if weather permits, but watch out for emerging spring bulbs. Herbaceous plants can be moved or divided as the soil dries out and bare root plants can still be planted for the next few weeks. If you have a tree or shrub that’s in the wrong place then now is the time to move it. Dig around it carefully and take as much root as you can. Our tree tagging project is going well and we now have over 500 trees around the estate tagged with the new electronic NFC chips. This will enable us to use a smart phone to access an online database of the trees. It will also be available to visitors in time, and will provide information on each tree we tag. It’s a big project. Only around another 1500 trees to go before we start on the shrubs! Our facebook group, ‘Friends of Blarney Castle Gardens’ now has over 750 members. Please join if you have an interest in gardening or want to keep up with the latest news from the castle. I update it most days with photos from around the grounds. I look forward to seeing you online or in the gardens. Adam
