With the ride-on mower out of action and the lawn growing lush and long, the first cut of the year had to be done with the petrol rotary. OK, it’s a big rotary, but the job has taken about 8 hours over three days, with just one stripe of the top lawn filling the clippings bag.

You learn a lot about a garden by mowing it on foot. Where the dips and damp patches are, the slopes, the changes in grass types, where the moss grows and therefore where the shady spots are. I’ve also learned two specific things about this garden by mowing it. There is much too much lawn and there are far too many specimen shrubs cut into circles in the grass. They are a total pain to mow round and look very spotty from a design point of view. This photo illustrates the problem pretty well. The plant is Helianthus salicifolia (in desperate need of cutting back).

Over the next couple of years I will definitely increase the border area and reduce the grass areas significantly.

Although we’ve barely started in the garden, the public areas of the nursery are almost sorted out. The sales shed has a new counter and roof and everyone has been furiously weeding pots, including Hazel whose GOTY experience seems to have given her a taste for horticulture.

We had confirmation today that we are firmly in the country with the arrival of the hunt. It seems to be an organised and primarily social affair with leaftlets through the door a week ago to let us know. I hadn’t anticipated the scale of it – a small group of lead riders and 20 dogs stopped outside the house to wait for a lost dog while the riders caught up. When the main group finally trotted through there were approaching 100 riders of all ages, including quite young children. A few of the foxhounds had a wander round our garden before they were rounded up.

I think Dave quite took to the foxhounds.

March 10, 2007