We are slowly catching up with the backlog left by the work on the roof last year although progress has been slowed by the wet spring. This has however had the benefit of filling the culvert under the house and the Festival Walk channel which I always like.
 
Some of last year’s planting is coming into flower. We have filled some gaps in the bed by the Festival Walk wall.
 
The Friends have taken over the mowing of the grass as part of the Council’s budget reductions. The rain has made our mowing a bit erratic but it is otherwise OK.
 
The baskets have been hung on the front of the house and we have started catching up with the front garden which has got rather overgrown.
 
I hope to clear some more of back beds over the summer but I don’t want to do any major clearance until the birds have finished nesting.

Work on the garden will resume in the next few weeks and hopefully it will be looking much better by the spring.
 
There have been two positive developments: we have sorted out one of the sheds and the council has carried out major repairs to the side gate which has been steadily deteriorating for several years. The woodwork is done, and the painting should happen shortly.

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.