Wednesday 4 January '12
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Local Bee-keeping Classes Starting Soon

Bee buddies

Our Beemaster General, guru David Walmsley, kicks off a new season of bee-keeping classes on 4 Thursday evenings (7.30-9pm) at Greenodd Village Hall near Ulverston, from March 8th - 29th 2012.
If you are very nice to him he might even be able to fix you up with a hive of bees, and believe me they're rarer than a sunny day at Lawson Park.

Call 01539 721501 for more info and booking.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5825/local-bee-keeping-classes-starting-soon on 04/01/12 at 15:41 0 Comments

Wednesday 21 December '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Volunteer tree-planting festivities

Many thanks to the hardy locals who joined us to plant some new trees yesterday - 24 x cherry plums (Prunus cerasifera) at the rear of the Paddies, and 6 silver birches (Betula pendula) at the foot of the Meadow, to counteract the exposure caused by Brantwood's recent felling of their mature woodland on our boundary.
Luckily, the rain only started once we were all safely back indoors consuming our festive lunch.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5814/volunteer-tree-planting-festivities on 21/12/11 at 12:04 0 Comments

Wednesday 21 December '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Volunteer tree-planting festivities

Many thanks to the hardy locals who joined us to plant some new trees yesterday - 24 x cherry plums (Prunus cerasifera) at the rear of the Paddies, and 6 silver birches (Betula pendula) at the foot of the Meadow, to counteract the exposure caused by Brantwood's recent felling of their mature woodland on our boundary.
Luckily, the rain only started once we were all safely back indoors consuming our festive lunch.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5814/volunteer-tree-planting-festivities on 21/12/11 at 12:04 0 Comments

Monday 28 November '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

You Just Keep me Hangin' On

Rudbeckia fulgida 'Goldsturm' just keeps going

At Lawson Park garden there are a few valiant plants still flowering through the recent hurricanes, worth listing here because as the saying goes 'if it works here it'll work anywhere'. Unlike the last two Novembers we have yet to see a hard frost:

Caltha palustris (the marsh marigold - one of the first flowers here and determined to be the last), clematis 'Black Prince' (pruned very late hence flowering very late), buddleia weyerania (a yellow globular form of the butterfly bush), prunus subhirtella autumnalis (a cherry), annual marigolds (calendula) and rudbeckia fulgida 'Goldsturm', and irrepressible yellow daisy-like perennial (pictured).

Good autumn colour in the form of bark, berries etc is found in cornus alba (common dogwood), salix alba vitillina (yellow willow), stephanandra tanakae (a Japanese shrub we have grown from seed). Viburnum opulus (our native guelder rose) keeps its beautiful red berries much longer than anything else.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5756/you-just-keep-me-hangin-on on 28/11/11 at 12:56 0 Comments

Tuesday 15 November '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Minimising Empty Days

Hoping this will be us soon!

These last few months waiting, getting excited about the new arrivals and now we discover that Octavia our pig is no longer pregnant. It seems likely that she was pregnant as she stopped coming into season after being served by a boar back in July. This would have made her due next week but because her mammary glands never developed, we have had to come to the conclusion that she lost her litter. From talking to Carole Barr, whose boar we borrowed to cover Octavia, she must have re-absorbed her pregnancy. This sounds quite gruesome but actually it makes sense for mammals that produce large numbers of offspring. If there's a problem with say just one embryo, rather than the whole litter being aborted, that one embryo can be reabsorbed into the body and the others can carry on to full-term.

From looking online, it doesn't seem that uncommon for a pig to lose her litter this way, but in proper pig business this translates financially as 'empty days' and the aim is to minimise empty days. This is done by either slaughtering the unproductive animal or taking it back to the boar as soon as the re-absorbtion is discovered. Fortunately we don't have to think in these terms as she's not our cash cow, so I think we will minimise her empty days by getting another grower in to keep her company. We'll take her to the boar soon and aim for a spring litter.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5755/minimising-empty-days on 15/11/11 at 17:59 0 Comments

Friday 11 November '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

It doesn't do this autumn-light thing often....

A north-east wards view of the bog and upper Farmhouse Garden, Nov. 2011

... so make the most of it.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5754/north-east-view-of-the-farmhouse-garden on 11/11/11 at 19:21 0 Comments

Friday 11 November '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

How do you spell 'Ssssshhhh' again?

During recent rainy weather a nice local signwriter has been at last inscribing our Library Manifesto on an interior wall.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5753/how-do-you-spell-ssssshhhh-again on 11/11/11 at 19:08 0 Comments

Friday 11 November '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Behind the curtain there are 342 species

An as-yet-unpublished area of our web site here - and one that would make Kew Gardens even greener with envy - is a plant database designed by Dorian Moore for us, and to wihch I have just added the 342nd plant entry.

It's all very clever, with maintenance info I can update for future LP gardeners, pictures and even notes on edibility. I promise that one day we will publish it. Promise.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5751/behind-the-curtain on 11/11/11 at 19:03 0 Comments

Friday 11 November '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Behind the curtain

An as-yet-unpublished area of our web site here - and one that would make Kew Gardens even greener with envy - is a plant database designed by Dorian Moore for us, and to whch I have just added the 342nd plant entry.

It's all very clever, with maintenance info I can update for future LP gardeners, pictures and even notes on edibility. I promise that one day we will publish it. Promise.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5751/behind-the-curtain on 11/11/11 at 19:03 0 Comments

Sunday 9 October '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Tomato Wars

Tomato 'Father Frost'

Tomato 'Sungold'

I had high hopes this year for my trial of new-to-us Eastern European tomoto varieties. Down at our allotment at Monk Coniston Walled Garden we are trying 'Koralik' outside - watch this space for report - but up at Lawson Park's polytunnel this year we grew 'Father Frost' and the trusty yellow cherry tomato, 'Sungold'.

These pictures tell you all you need to know, and from past experience we will be picking Sungold right up to Christmas time. 'Father Frost' - like other Eastern European variteties - promised hardiness and vigour which I hoped would match our very tomato-unfriendly climate. At first it indeed grew very well and produced many offshoots which one is advised not to pinch out - in other words instead of the traditional cordon you got a rather unwieldy but promising bush. The problem was that by the time of ripening in August, the close foliage was getting mildewy and shading the fruits, and in addition fruit was rather haphazardly shaped and distributed. Eventually a meagre harvest was gleaned of dull-flavoured fruit.

Take in contrast the elegant 'Sungold' - a far sparser plant, almost straggly after its late January sowing. Both varities were deep-plated out in late May with the first 15cm of their stems buried in the enriched soil. Removing side shoots keeps the plant in shape and allows air and light to the fruits, which up here don't even think about ripening till very late August. But boy are they worth the wait.

I'm reminded that of course 'Sungold' has the RHS Award of Garden Merit (AGM) and more the fool me for not choosing other varieties that share this most trustworthy of endorsements - note to self, to refer to the list of all AGM tomatoes before browsing next year's seed catalogues....

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5737/tomato-wars on 09/10/11 at 15:51 0 Comments

Wednesday 14 September '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Pickles, but not as you know them

Shiso preserved in miso

There are only so many jars of traditional British pickle you can consume in a year, and my annual pickling has in recent harvests expanded to include a number of Asian varieties. This recipe book, The Perfect Pickle is a well thumbed and stained inspiration, as was our visit to Japan in 2006. One of the most magical Japanese pickles I tasted, and sadly the nost hopeless to replicate at home, was one made with rice wine lees (the stuff leftover from saki brewing) - an unforgettable, ancient flavour with all the complexity and more besides of any European fermented food. At Lawson Park we regularly make kimchi (a fiery and restorative Korean short-term pickle) for which use the legendary Madhur Jaffrey's recipe, and my nuka box (a paste of fermented rice bran into which vegetables are buried) is now in its third year, having even had to travel to Germany to help cater a Myvillages seminar.

Just now, we have a great many vegetables still in the ground that are fast deteriorating in the stormy weather. Purple shiso is a stunning-looking plant most often grown here in the UK in bedding schemes. We grow it in the polytunnel (as well as the green variety) and now is the time to harvest the large fragrant leaves for winter use. This year I'm again simply layering them flat in a glass jar with miso paste, using a flat knife as if I'm buttering a whole load of sandwiches. It'll last the whole winter, and the mix makes all sorts of delicious soup bases and dressings.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5695/pickles-but-not-as-you-know-them on 14/09/11 at 10:18 0 Comments

Tuesday 30 August '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Hedging our bets with autumn-sown annual flowers

This year's disasterous annuals from Pictorial Meadows :-(

2009's great show - same seed mix, same space

We''ve burned off & prepped circa 120 sq m round our building

The fresh annual seed about to be mixed with coir

Brushing the sown seed into the gravel helps it bed in

Experienced gardeners know the quiet satisfaction of doing something at this time of year specifically to look great next year. In fact I'm lookig forward to the next NGS Open Garden Day (Sept 3rd) being over so I can rip into some other jobs that would be too carnage-inducting to attempt before a public viewing.

Like so many, we have fallen for the delights of meadows and pseudo-meadows at Lawson Park. For the last few years we have used Pictorial Meadows seed mixes in some very poor areas in front of the hostel, to magnificent effect (see pic). Until this year. Despite sowing it twice (not cheap) and weeding it very avidly we have an abismal show of mainly weeds and a few corn cockles. Perhaps duff seed, erratic weather, slugs or all of the above.

Partly based on this, and on my observations of how few native annual plants flower in a single season at this altitude / climate, I've decided to try sowing a hardy annual seed mix now (in fact it would have been better a few weeks ago but fingers crossed for a sunny September). The idea is that these seeds germinate and grow to a few inches before holding out the winter and resuming growth in spring. This would be nature's way, of course. Beautiful natives thriving here such as angelica sylvestris and arctium lappa do just this.

The area we hope to transform is the 3m curtiledge of the building on its east side (the Lake side) at the top of our lawn / meadow. A total of about 100 sq metres of mainly gravel, poor but sunny (for here) and well-drained. If our plan works we will have a Disney-esque technicolour band of colour round our grey walls for most of summer 2012. Adam has flame burned it of its worse weeds (again, this in some way mimics nature's rejuvenations) and I followed this with a rough forkover. The species we have chosed to sow were based on the most successful from our Pictorial Meadows experiments, plus I threw in some Phacelia for its insect-attractiveness. I mixed some 200g of phacelia, cornflower, corn cockle and corn marigold from Moles Seeds with coir and a little seed compost to make it handle easier. We have in the past tried to handsow at the recommended 2-3g per sq metre and it's very hard to be mean enough with the seed. I then took the unusual step of brushing the seed / coir vigorously into the gravel to bed it in. I now hope for just the right amount of sun and rain to get these wee seeds ahead before what may be a 3rd apocalypic winter in a row at Lawson Park!

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5688/autumn-sown-annual-flowers... on 30/08/11 at 23:21 0 Comments

Thursday 28 July '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Five weeks later

And the pig fodder seed mix is taking off. Our gilt Octavia should be pregnant by now. The boar we borrowed from local Lop breeder Carole Barr (www.pigsandpoultry.co.uk) doesn't seem to be interested in our girl any more, so job done, hopefully. The gestation period is 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days, and the piglets weaned around 4 or 5 weeks. This field will be ready for them by then so they will have lots of excellent rooting and nutrition before we sell them on.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5650/five-weeks-later on 28/07/11 at 15:45 0 Comments

Friday 24 June '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Watch the garden grow

Here's a link to a frequently updated Facebook photo album of the garden here at LP.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5641/watch-the-garden-grow on 24/06/11 at 12:33 0 Comments

Wednesday 22 June '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Pig Fodder

The pigs have done a brilliant job of turning over their original field. So much so that we have to fence another two fields for them to work over. This field that they expertly rotavated with their snouts will be planted in the next couple of weeks with a pig grazing mix from Woodhead Seeds. It's a mix of cocksfoot, chicory, timothy grass, white clover and rye grass. A very good supplement to their diet.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5640/pig-fodder on 22/06/11 at 15:25 0 Comments

Thursday 9 June '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

When Web Designers Make Gardens

On a rare and well-deserved break from hard code last year, web guru Dorian planted up this bed in front of the artists residency at LP.

Can anyone draw any parallels between this lovely block of native foxglove (digitalis purpurea) and the Internet?!

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5626/when-web-designers-make-gardens on 09/06/11 at 10:23 0 Comments

Thursday 19 May '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Lawson Park wins RIBA award!

We're all very thrilled that our HQ has won a regional RIBA award - congrats all round!

You can read more about Lawson Park's architecture here.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5612/lawson-park-wins-riba-award on 19/05/11 at 18:10 0 Comments

Tuesday 10 May '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Blonde Bombshell

Fern the Runner Duck

We've recently taken delivery of 5 gorgeous runner ducklings, soon to be free-ranging as a slug control in the Kitchen Garden.

Here's one of them

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/5605/blonde-bombshell on 10/05/11 at 00:16 0 Comments

Friday 18 February '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Me & My Garden

Here is a list of questions I recently completed for local paper - The Westmorland Gazette - 'Me and My Garden' feature. As it was ruthlessly edited for publication here's the full text:

DESCRIBE THE GARDEN The cultivated areas run to about 5 acres but this includes a steep Wildflower Meadow of about 3 acres, which includes a small oak and bluebell wood and a stream. At the top of the meadow is our new orchard and also my polytunnel. The other areas are: The Farmhouse Garden - closest to Lawson Park's artist residency base, this area is the most mature in the garden and is filled chiefly with seed-raised herbaceous plants planted in a dense tapestry of rich colour and texture. There are grasses and architectural phormiums to anchor the design in winter. We also use local native plants in unexpected ways here - e.g soft rush (juncus effusus) is planted formally here, and this year we've underplanted these with alliums. Bog Garden - this sits around a natural stream and is close by our warden's house. It's planted with Iris 'Holden Clough' and many Asiatic primula, to a yellow colour scheme that reminds me of the gorse that once filled the gorge before we cleared it out. Woodland Garden - an informal sloped area with a wooden walkway set amidst large clumps of grass underplanting young trees and shrubs The SW-facing raised bed Kitchen Garden is 5 years old and we have a large soft fruit cage bed and herb and comfrey beds here too, as well as hens and bees. Paddies - a SW- facing terraced field of about 2 acres for larger scale and experimental food crops. Its name comes from the fact that it was laid out by a group of Japanese rice farmers with whom Grizedale Arts did a cultural exchange project in 2006/7.

HOW/WHEN DID YOU GET INTO GARDENING? Like many children, I had a square metre of mud in my family garden in Largs (Ayrshire) from when I was a toddler. But It was really when at about 9 or 10 years old I casually planted a seed from a Golden Delicious apple I was eating in the garden, and it germinated, that I got hooked. As far as I know the resulting apple tree is still in the garden - it certainly was when my parent sold up! . As a teenager I redesigned and replanted the front garden at the same house, and I notice it's still as I left it over 20 years on! Another childhood memory is when my dad was helping run a community festival (the Viking Festival!) and they cleared out an empty local shop to use as a base. He gave me a big old box of very diverse seeds from there and for some reason I decided to sow them. It was thrilling to see them grow on and to this day I'm a very keen seed-grower.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING ON YOUR GARDEN? 9 years

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE FEATURE AND WHY? Probably the bit I work the least on - the Wildflower Meadow! We just mow some paths in it really but it's always a delight to walk through it with the cats hunting behind you and clouds of butterflies wafting up. Looking closely at its surface has inspired much of my planting elsewhere in the garden - it contains alchemilla mollis, sanguisorba, meadowsweet and knautia all together for example. On a good year we get a nice crop of cep mushrooms in the woodland area too. I so rarely ever sit down in the garden, but the one place I can happily lie and nap is the meadow as I can relax in the knowledge that Mother Nature is head gardener here!

HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU SPEND IN YOUR GARDEN? It varies massively according to season - in some winter months perhaps as little as a few hours in a month - just enough to tidy up a little en route to the compost heap. I'm very committed to using labour-saving techniques like mulching. May is incredibly busy but exciting here - plants surge up overnight and I spend a full week mulching and staking the main borders. After that many areas of our garden are surprisingly low maintenance though, as it's full of big, brazen plants that knit together very fast, and I've been careful to keep lawns and edges to a minimum. Vegetable growing is undeniably high-maintenance and in summer our Kitchen Garden this takes myself and my partner Adam an hour or so each day to maintain. But as we're foodies we have no complaints and we like to have plenty to feed our visitors. We're also lucky enough to have volunteers and visiting artists periodically to help - this is especially important when we're harvesting or tacking new ground clearance.

WHY DO YOU ENJOY GARDENING? I enjoy a challenge - and starting from scratch with acres of fellside at 200m altitude certainly has been that! A number of locals - when I first moved here - told me not to bother even trying to start a garden as the deer and the weather would see to it. I'm very contrary, and I thought 'I'll show them!' I also wanted to see if a more contemporary garden - different from the usual Lake District lawns and rhododendrons - could work with such an old historic building such as Lawson Park, so to have this scale and scope as a designer has been a privilege. I'm still learning and experimenting, and would hate to have a static garden where I couldn't keep playing with plants. On a personal level, the activity can be reflective and therapeutic when work gets tough.

WHAT INSPIRES YOU? Mountain landscapes the world over, but especially in Japan where I have travelled and saw many of my most successful plants growing in the wild. I'm also interested in the history of gardening and am inspired by experimental gardeners like Marjory Fish and of course Christopher Lloyd. Many gardens feed me with ideas - I even keep a blog about some of them - http://otherpeoplesgardens.wordpress.com/

HAVE YOU SUFFERED ANY CATASTOPHES IN YOUR GARDEN? We have no deer fencing, and as we're bang in the middle of Grizedale Forest we are occasionally affected by deer grazing or breaking trees and shrubs. The worse attack ever was one day after our first National Garden Scheme Open Day though, so at least the deer have manners! I've learned from bitter experience that summer gales can flatten our vast 'prairie' style border plants, so I make attractive rustic stakes and 'cages' in May for them to grow through - by July they've disappeared under the leaves but are working their magic beneath - like the boning in a Versace dress! Rodents can also do a lot of damage but our cats help on that front.

ANY FUTURE PLANS FOR YOUR GARDEN? This winter we've started planting -at long last - an orchard of selected fruit varieties from Wales, England, Scotland and Ireland. It will take 2 years to plant and then we'll wait and see which country wins! We'd love to make a pond upstream from our bog garden, if we can summon the resources to do so. I'm also planning to acquire some ducks this year, as the slugs in my Kitchen Garden are big enough to get a saddle on!

DO YOU HAVE ANY TOP GARDENING TIPS? Mulch is a crucial labour saver (suppressing most weeds), and creates soil where there is none - after 9 years of annual mulching, what was a barren, rocky hillside is now our very fertile Farmhouse Garden at Lawson Park. I use composted green waste from the Council, bark, bracken or mushroom compost. Propagate your own plants - having many specimens of the same plant instead of few changes your garden design for the better as you can plant in swathes and experiment without fearing losses so much. Lavish attention on soil preparation - especially before planting hedges or trees. We have one hedge that has grown well over 2 metres high in 5 years due to a trench generously fed with well-rotted manure and being kept weed-free for at least 3 years. Remember to sow small amounts of some of the hardier vegetables in July and August for autumn and winter use - even at our altitude of 200m we can have spinach, chard, turnips, winter purslane and cabbage for picking through to March or so. Leaf beet is an extraordinarily hardy green if sown mid-late summer. Don't overfeed the young plants and we also find that firming well and minimising thinning also helps see them through.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/4672/me-my-garden on 18/02/11 at 00:17 0 Comments

Tuesday 15 February '11
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Applephilia

Imagine the blossom

We've added a new web bit about our new orchard here.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/4667/applephilia on 15/02/11 at 11:59 0 Comments