The Green Man of Spring

The Green Man of Spring. 
Copyright Alex Francis Illustrations
http://www.alexifrancisillustrations.co.uk

The bones of winter have been picked bare and the Green Man of Spring is stirring in the gardens of Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. 

Seeds of heritage cabbage, celeriac, onion, pepper and tomato have sprouted and are quite comfy for now in the Heritage Garden’s glasshouse. The gardeners are drinking from springs of sunshine and no longer require their long-johns!  Long furrows, straight as arrows, are being drawn across the crumbly soil of the vegetable beds.  The lids of the terracotta forcer pots are being worn quite jauntily as the blanched rhubarb leaves begin to push them aside.  Someone tell a pastry chef!

And so a new chapter in Belmond Le Manoir’s garden story has begun.  Designer Anne Keenan MSGD and garden builders Walmsley Shaw are now on site. We begin 'setting out' from Anne’s detailed plans by marking out the new paths and the principle structures.

Setting out the new Heritage Garden

Anne’s winning Heritage Garden design echoes the formal features found throughout the Belmond Le Manoir gardens, those wiggly paths, circles in the form of the dovecote, stone roundels and clipped bay, as well as the geometric formality of Jekka McVicar's wonderful herb garden.  

Raymond Blanc is a lover of the sinuous line. He wants the garden to share that same sensuous and feminine quality that he has nurtured throughout Belmond Le Manoir over thirty years and, along with Anne, he has selected the most beautiful and sustainable materials available. We really hope to show through this project that an organic garden can look stunning as well as being ethical!

Raymond Blanc OBE & Designer Anne Keenan MSGD

Anne's clever design will slow one's passage through the Heritage Garden, encouraging our guests to rest, pause and take in the shifting views across the gardens and to delight in the details of the fascinating heritage vegetable varieties on show.  If you visit you will really get amongst the plants, which have been carefully chosen to attract bees and butterflies, the true workers of nature!   The garden will vibrate with movement, form and colour.  Scent from the flowers will weave harmoniously through the music of wildlife going about its important business. 

Anyway.  Before I get too carried away it's back to work!  

Just so you know, building gardens isn't a walk in the park.  I have a bruise that resembles a Turner landscape to prove it.  Fortunately the Walmsley Shaw team are true pros and the French foreman is showing me the ropes as well as teaching me the gallic names for garden tools. I hope RB is impressed!

Above: Recycled Holm oak Beam. 
Below: Uprooted birch hedge to be recycled.

Now that we have set out we remove an old birch hedge and retain the papery trunks. We keep these aside to provide a habitat for a variety of insects that help maintain a balanced ecosystem and reduce the likelihood of a pest outbreak. Recycling and sustainability are big themes in the garden and so we retain extant Cotswold stone edging for constructing seating walls and we reuse the base of the old paths as a foundation for the new ones. Broken terracotta pots have been collected and stored over winter and will soon be crushed to form the surface of another new path.  We are proud not to be using any concrete on this build, which consumes huge amounts of energy in its production. 

Fortuitously, an ancient Holm oak on the Old Drive came down in high winds this winter and so we have salvaged one of its enormous beams. It has been sunk upright into a deeply excavated hole and backfilled with waste rubble and topsoil.  Soon to become a hand sculpted, five star bug hotel it will boast hundreds of rooms, all made from hollow stems of nettle, pampas grass and teasel, and will cater exclusively for our special invertebrate friends, who we were just talking about.  With wonderful reptilian bark made greenish by lichen and its strong, hard wood, the Holm oak was a symbol of fertility for the ancient Greeks. Can’t imagine why! This windfall has also provided us with a bounty of hardwood bark chippings perfect for use on our wiggly  paths and demonstration garden.

The delivery of several Scottish whiskey barrels predictably distracts the garden team from their springtime duties.  Like bees foraging for nectar I find them practically upturned in the barrels, inhaling the peaty fumes left behind by gallons of uisce beatha and emerging with wistful demeanours. 

A fragrant Scotch whisky cask & water-butt

One particularly large barrel will collect run-off rainwater from the roof of the Hartley Botanic glasshouse.  Two other half casks will be sunk into the garden, filled with water drawn from the depths of our bore hole, and planted up to create a habitat for insects and amphibians.  We had to think on our feet when the barrels, clearly intended for sale as planters, and not wildlife ponds, arrived with several holes drilled in their bottoms.  RB, once notified, came to the rescue with a pocket full of champagne corks, which we pushed snugly into the offending holes. In celebration he jumped into the pit intended for the barrel providing us with ample opportunity for photos and a caption competition! Please do Tweet your suggestions @raymond_blanc.

RB hits rock bottom!

This weekend (28th-30th March) Raymond Blanc and Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons will be joining our partner Garden Organic at 'The Edible Garden Show' in Alexandra Palace, London.  Please do come and visit us. We will be getting enthused about the Heritage Garden and the Heritage Seed Library's collection of rare and unusual varieties. 

Hope to see you there...

RB & Me