Digging Deep: November At Trebah

Autumn is in full swing here at Trebah, although you wouldn’t think it from the weather.

Digging Deep is a monthly account of life in the garden, as written by Trebah's gardeners

The first half of November has been dry and mild with the only crisp feeling being that of dry leaves under wellington boots. It’s waited until almost the end of the month to start feeling like any possibility of winter creeping in.

Although Christmas has now arrived in the visitor centre, we must not forget to celebrate the beauty of Autumn here in the garden. The seasonal colour palette of November is not something to be missed, and although there are still some flowers to spot, the Autumn leaves take centre stage.

As gardeners, we have been thankful for the many dry and mild days we have been treated to, with the hope of a smaller margin of cold before we are back in shorts again!

A makeover for Tressie

For all of you who know Dinky’s puddle, you’ll surely also know our resident pond caretaker, Tressie. Spending their days basking in the waters of Dinky’s, often playing model to thousands of visitors who snap pictures each year. As a much loved member of the Trebah family, we thought it was only fair he was given a spruce up after a busy summer. With moss collected from the grounds, one of the team took out the boat and patched Tressie up, restoring a weary head and body ready for another year.

Party in the Valley

You may have noticed what looks like lots of little Christmas hats where the Gunnera used to be down in the valley - I suppose it is party season!

We have been hard at work with our machetes, tidying away what’s left of the wind blown stems and straggly leaves. Each stem is carefully chopped into pieces and left in situ to rot down, whilst the leaves are turned upside down and placed over the crowns to offer protection, tucking them in for winter. The leaves act as a mulch to provide a source of food for next year’s growth, helping the new stems to regrow into our fabulous Gunnera display in Spring.

Taming the Chusquea

One member of the team has been working hard to revamp an area of Chusquea gigantea Bamboo in the garden which had become a little wild. The clump was hand-reared from seed collected from its ancestors, which grew in the same location but sadly flowered and died. The young plants were brought on in our nursery and planted out on the edge of the Bamboozle behind Azolla around 2 and a half years ago. Now at a reasonable size to prune, we have legged up the bottom few feet to expose the golden canes, which look especially magnificent on a sunny day.

A very natural Christmas

As well as all those outdoor jobs in the garden, some of the team have been hard at work behind the scenes, helping to put together a plan for a natural-themed Christmas. The aim was to decorate the trees in the Visitor Centre using mostly materials sourced from the garden. Thankful for a dry Autumn, we managed to spend a week harvesting a whole array of seed heads, cones, leaves and flowers to dry out as ornaments that would otherwise have been deadheaded and composted. Once dry, we spent a few days putting together different combinations to create decorations, as well as stringing together hundreds of leaves for the ‘leaf tinsel’.

The big Christmas tree was delivered late afternoon and culminated in a few hectic hours of decorating so everything was ready for the customers the next morning. We are very proud of everything we have managed to create; not only in how great the trees look, but also by delivering the message that Christmas can be beautiful, affordable and kind to the planet too.