While walking down the driveway to buy the weekend FT (Robin Lane Fox has that excellent Garden column) I noted lots of things to be done. The tree plantings that Lorna did ten years or so ago have matured and lots of volunteer seedlings of ash have also grown up. Now single trees are competing with neighbours for light and the canopy is shading out the shrubs under the trees.
We need to thin and fell lots of small trees during the winter to preserve and encourage the shrub layer which includes wild and semi-wild roses and
Viburnum tomentosum. There are plenty of suckers on roses (lots on
Rosa gentiliana, R. californica plena and
R. pimpinellifolia Altaica) and on the viburnums. I need to get some of these potted and grown on for sale at the Spring Plant Sale for the Friends of Treboth Botanic Garden. The hips on the left are from
R. gentiliana which is probably a selection of
R. multiflora Cathayensis. Rose Scintillation, also on the drive has nice bunches of orange and green hips.
The white birch (seeded when drive was constructed) and conifers (particularly
Abies concolor and sitka ) are looking good and the small beeches near the summit of the road provide welcome winter colour from their persistent rust-red leaves.
The mountains as seen over the back hedge have their first real cover of snow for this year.
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