Nursery News September 2025

Where has the time gone?

It's September already and we have been desperately trying to catch up with the work that was missed during my illness.

There was a bit of a fly in the ointment that involved the shelves running along the outside the tunnel. The pallets that have served us well for 4 years were absolutely rotten and leaning on them to reach trees at the back was becoming a gamble.

They could have collapsed at any time so it became a priority to swap them out for new ones using scaffolding boards that were acquired at a reasonable price from a local reclamation yard. John with some help from Nick has done a great job with the construction and setting up the automatic watering system again. Thanks to him we can crack on with the other work on the trees in ernest.

Three new satsuki azalea varieties (see pictures) have been aquired from a lovely chap called Ron. When he showed me a picture of his "Koun" Iwas smitten and immediately said I would love a cutting or two to buy or swap. He did much better than that. He had managed to propagate quite a lot of them (approx 40) by ground layering them.

He has also presented me with a tray of satsuki seedlings that he has managed to get germinated. This is a new venture for me so I am very keen to see what sort of flowers develop from them over the next few years.

He is very keen on this incredible species and plans to increase his collection of varieties now that he has made some space. 😄

Once things are a bit more together,I will also be making efforts to update the pictures of the stock on the website once we have completed the stock taking.

The Japanese pines and itoigawa junipers have grown well and require updates. Everything has grown and thickened up nicely, so they all need photographs taking and uploading.

We will also put together some bundles of the young crabapple and oak etc, for selling off in order to create some more space for satsuki azaleas.

If we get some time we will also start digging up the Japanese Maples and Zelkova nire that have been growing in the ground for the last 4 years. They have developed some interesting trunks and thickened up well.

So, as long as I take things easy I can manage to do some light work on the trees without getting too exhausted. It takes a day or two for me to recover from a day at the nursery and then I can do some more.

I have an oncology appointment on the 10th September so fingers crossed that all goes well and we come up with a treatment plan to get rid of the lodger in my lung. I will update the news at a later date.

Thanks to everyone for their patience and kind words.