The planting we did last spring has settled down and most things seem to be doing well. The herb bed that we planted in May has really taken off – the plants are flourishing and looking almost wild.
 
We have cleared the rectangular pond in the back corner of the garden which has been flooded with water and was starting to get overgrown again. The water has dropped so it’s now easier to work there. We have cleared some weeds and also a mass of dead wood out of the hedge behind the pond which has improved its appearance.
 
The recent dry and then wet weather has been interesting. The garden tends towards extremes of wet and dry in different areas. The bed along the north side next to Festival Walk gets almost no benefit from summer showers. The rain wets the trees and then the water evaporates before it gets to the ground. In the dry period in early summer we had to do quite a lot of watering to keep the plants going. The lawn is strange; a significant part of it was covered by the marquee in the spring and has had no direct rain since and yet the ground there is quite damp. The water seems to soak sideways from the rest of the lawn. This sideways seepage does not seem to help the Festival Walk bed – why, I don’t know. It is one of those little mysteries trying to tell me something about what us underground.

The planting from last Autumn and last month is starting to flower making the whole thing feel more like a garden.

​There is still a long way to go. The next big job is to tackle the overgrown beds along the north side of the garden and the ponds. These have been left to avoid disturbing any nesting birds but they should now be finished. This is for the next session.

A small group had a long work session on Sunday putting in a collection of new plants which have been bought by The Friends of Honeywood Museum.

​Honeywood and the wider Heritage Service are currently involved in a lavender project which is part of the Cultural Services STEAM project which is supported by the Mayor of London and the Heritage Fund.  Details of the STEAM events can be found here.

​We have created a new herb bed at the corner of the house near the French windows, The central feature of this is two large pots which were bought a long time ago and haven’t been planted for some years. They now contain a collection of herbs and there are more in the bed. The plants include lavender and Mitcham Black mint which were both grown commercially in the local area in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

​We also put herbs in the pots on the wall by the French windows. Hopefully they will soon generate some nice scents.

​We also added some extra plants to the bed by the Festival Walk wall. Most of the bed was planted last autumn but one end had to left pending some tree work which has now been finished. Some of the plants we wanted were also unavailable. We have now filled the gaps. Last autumn’s planting has also recovered from the winter and the bed now looks much better and very promising for the summer.

We have had a couple of work sessions and murdered quite a lot of small weeds. There are still areas to be done but it feels like progress. The planting in the bed next to the Festival Walk wall is looking more perky. I was a bit worried about last Autumn’s planting, but I think everything, or almost everything, has got through the winter.
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I am starting to think about the problem of the rectangular pond in the corner next to Festival Walk. 

We had the first general garden session of the year on Monday clearing dead leaves and murdering a few weeds.

​The planting we did last autumn is beginning to stir and the daffodils planted last spring are also coming out. It’s a bit early for some of new plants but hopefully they will all be growing soon.

Image: The bed by the Pound Street wall