I've spent all of my thirty-plus years as a gardener cursing people who bury rubbish in their gardens. Now it's my turn. Nick spent a long time at Easter improving the edge to the Rose Walk terrace - the slabs were uneven and annoyed me when I looked down on them from above. In March I made the (expensive) decision that I would plant a yew hedge to mark the line properly. The plants (top quality, good price by mail order, from Jardin des Gazelles in Normandy) arrived in mid-March. This weekend (13/14 April) they finally went into the ground. They had to be planted in a manner that I think would have been all too common in the Chatillon sur Saone of the past: Renaissance-style, with full body armour against the wretched rat-taupiers (water voles). I had chosen yew (Taxus baccata) quite carefully. It is acceptably Renaissance and so 'in period' for the garden of a Renaissance house. More importantly, it creates a fibrous, very matted, root system that I suspect the RTs will not enjoy. Still, can't take any chances. Every last plant went into a V shape of chicken wire to protect the young roots. Fingers crossed - perhaps in fifteen years?
There are also many, many, tulips that those wretches didn't eat during the winter (see pic below): I'd say I'll have 70% of what I planted in November flowering? Also below, lovely new steps made by Nick over Easter. Flanked by Angelica archangelica in baskets against the RTs. Everything planted much too close when I look at the yew and the little box hedges and the Angelica. It's a work in progress says the painter holding the brush ...