Moors Meadow Open Gardens and Nursery - Bromyard

This Month

This Month July 2025 - Monday, 30 Jun 2025

June has been another busy month but sometimes I get so involved in one job that I forget to look around me. The Damson patch, or maybe I should now say Damson and Acer patch, has a lot of perennial ground cover, however with the many of the old Damsons coming down and new small Damson and Acer trees going in there is not much shade. This means that the grass grows rapidly and after the bit of rain so much so that I could have played hide and seek in it. Due to the perennials I had to get in there with the hand shears but it took me less time than I expected to clear the grass and uncover the groundcover, I will be glad when the trees grow to create shade and thus reduce the grass. When I finished I decided to give the same treatment to the patch at the far end of the fernery with young trees, shrubs and perennials. I was happy to see how well the Cautleya are spreading, but mostly the perennials are different Rodgersia and Astilbe. I then moved on to the ‘bung it in’ bed where I was just going to pull the bit of tall grass from the first six feet of the bed as just by doing that amount it would be a great improvement. However just two hours later with a speed weed I had done the whole bed which should not need much attention until I chop it back in the winter, although I will cut off the Eupatorium after the butterflies have enjoyed the flowers but before the seed ripens otherwise they will spread too much. Mind you, if I left them there would be quite a fight between the Eupatorium and the Golden Rod as they vie for space but the downside is that everything else would get nudged out in the process.
Now the hot dry spell is causing problems. I do not water except the bare minimum on pots as I do not like to waste this precious resource, and then I only use saved rain water, never from the taps. I would certainly never water grass as some do with their lawns. We humans are consuming water faster than it is being replenished by nature. Though as I watch just a slow drip from my water source I am certainly restricting my water use. It always amazes me how people who live a sedentary lifestyle feel they need to shower every day, I do a heavy physical job yet due to the water situation do not have the luxury of a shower more than twice a week if I am lucky.
The soft fruit is now mostly picked, what a crop, one freezer is over half full of strawberries, raspberries and cherries. Fingers crossed that the vegetables will be equally good crops.
The hot weather hasn’t slowed me down and I am working long hours. In the spring garden I decided to strim the grass as it was so tall, I raked the grass to mulch around the trees and shrubs. It is another area where the grass will diminish as the plants grow up. I noticed that after a slow start the Black Oak is now growing well. I did try to introduce Yellow Rattle to that area but for some reason it wasn’t happy there.
The Primula candleabra is still looking good, as are the Cornus, the Hydrangea are colouring up and the garden looks lush even though a few plants are not happy in the dry spell.
As you know Moors Meadow is now an RHS Partner Garden which is an honour and raises the profile greatly, this is also of benefit to the local community as it brings more visitors to the area. A good way to increase this is for you all to vote Moors Meadow Gardens as ‘your favourite’ partner garden, any member of the public can vote and you will be entered for a prize draw to win £100 gift voucher. All you have to do is go to www.rhs.org.uk/pgoty scroll down and click on ‘Vote now for your favourite garden’ and follow instructions clicking on ‘West midlands and East Anglia’ region, then scroll down to Moors Meadow Gardens and finish the very short details.

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