I’m very lucky where I get to live. As part of my job as the head gardener of Scone Palace I stay in the Gardeners House which sits just outside the walled garden.
This was often the case on the estates of large houses around the country where the gardener would be provided with accommodation next to the productive garden.
Life of a palace gardener
This was so they could be immediately on hand to go out in the evening to cover crops needing protected from frost or to keep the boiler going for growing the likes of exotic orchids under glass.
As you would expect of a palace, the operation at Scone was much larger, and on a scale that more than one such properties were required.
The head gardener had their own house in the heart of the action.
The foremen for all the different departments and the gardeners underneath them lived nearby, and may have been lucky to have had a property elsewhere on the estate.
How the news ones learned
The next generation of gardeners would have been learning their trade from those above them, often having to carry out the less glamorous gardening jobs of shovelling manure or moving coal.
How well they dealt with would help to earn the respect of their tutors.
Thankfully by the time I was an apprentice in the early 1990s I just had to make sure I could make a decent cup of tea.
Thinking back the gardeners I learned from, gardeners could be so fussy it may have been less stress being an apprentice 100 plus years ago!
In the Victorian times these youngsters would be working long hours during the day before having academic lessons at night.
They would often be put up in a ‘bothy’ which is the house that I live in the grounds of Scone Palace today.
I’ve seen the original plans for when it was built in 1866 where I find it fascinating to see such things that part of our living room used to be the supervisors own quarters.
I can just imagine the lessons being carried out around a table beside the fire in the rest of the room.
Making space to grow
I love garden history like this and it adds to that special feeling of living in a place like this.
The house comes with a decent-sized garden too. I know I already look after 100 acres of gardens and grounds during the day but it’s always nice to have your own wee plot.
When I finally move on, hopefully not for a while yet, getting a house with decent-sized garden is a must.
This something that worries me, especially when I see the postage-stamp-sized plots coming with some of the new builds today.
But if that does end up being the case I won’t panic, as I know that no matter what size of outdoor space I have to garden in it’ll still be enough.
We’re a resilient bunch us gardeners, we’ve always found a way.
One of the best methods is growing in containers, which I’m already doing around the small seated area we have and is also ideal for those with patios and balconies.
I really enjoy this style of gardening. It always stays fresh, as with bedding we are re-doing our containers a good two or three times a year to keep up with the seasons.
Easy to change a look
If we’re not happy with how our displays are looking well that can be changed in simply a matter of minutes by switching the pots around.
I also like the challenge of keeping the plants that grow in them looking good and keeping them healthy.
The composts that come in the bags we buy from garden centres generally only have enough goodness in them to keep the plants in tip top condition for around a month.
Thereafter we replace the nutrients a plant desperately needs through additional feeding.
In our beds and borders this may be through a granular feeding, but with containers this will be through a liquid feeding.
This is applied either at weekly or fortnightly intervals when we are giving them a drink.
It’s also possible to grow plants in a container more permanently, but when we do this we must pay more attention to the growing medium, using a soil-based compost instead.
Its make-up is more for the long term rather than a short, seasonal burst of energy.
Growing soft fruit in containers
Last spring I started growing a selection of soft fruit in containers as I didn’t want to dig up more of my lawn to create new beds.
So far so good with crops of blueberries, gooseberry and blackcurrants forming nicely today.
They’ll get to a point, if not there already, when it becomes too impractical to pot them on but still there’s the dilemma of trying to freshen up the mediums they grow in.
If you can, it’s best practise to take the plants out and repot with fresh compost each spring but if not, carefully scrape off as much soil as you possibly can from the top and replace it with fresh.
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