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

Work has resumed in the garden after a long late autumn and early winter break. We coppiced a somewhat overgrown hazel which is between the garden and the Festival Walk channel. It was casting a lot of shade and was heading towards damaging the wall. The plant has not been removed. It will grow back from the stump and after a few years we will need to cut it again. The process can be repeated over and over. Oliver Rackham the late and great historian of ancient woodlands and the English countryside thought that some of the coppice stools in the woods of Suffolk and Essex were hundreds of years old. Judging by the size, ours is not of vast antiquity but hopefully it will carrying on growing and being cut for a few more centuries.

It feels like we started the Honeywood garden project in another age – it was April last year. Various problems caused me to miss the spring planting window and the drought more or less brought things to a standstill over the summer. I was beginning to wonder if we ever get anything planted. Yesterday we brought just over £400 worth of plants on site, all paid for by The Friends of Honeywood Museum. Today they were put into the bed by Festival Walk wall and the one by the belfry. The recent rain has made the ground nice and damp and hopefully they will prosper and make a good show next summer. There are a few gaps where things we wanted were not available and I hope we can fill these over the next few weeks or in the spring.