Christmas at Wyken Hall

Wow what an experience as difficult as it was to be away from my family for the holidays my stay at Wyken Hall was amazing!  I arrived the day before Christmas eve at Stowmarket train station and was picked up and taken to Wyken Hall.  Wyken hall is an amazing estate owned by Sir Kennet and Carla Carlisle located in Suffolk.  I stayed in what is known as the french room a very lovely bedroom with a incredibly comfortable bed built into the wall.  It was sleeping on a cloud you never wanted to get off of it.  The room had a gorgeous view into the garden and beyond into the sheep pasture.  Their house was a beautiful English estate with unique decorations and amazing art work.  My time began with a tour of the garden, shop, cafe, and restaurant.  It is quite an amazing place.  Their restaurant, cafe, and shop are located in a 300 year old barn which they remodeled for that purpose.  The estate gets much of its character from the numerous animals it has.  As you can see from the pictures they have turkeys, chickens, peacocks, sheep, llamas, and a cow.  The family also has the most precious dog Ottis.  Most of my stay revolved around amazing food.  I tried so many new things which were amazing.  Carla was a fantastic cook making several fantastic meals which always came with a lovely glass of wine.  Besides myself there were three other guests who were very lovely and made my stay memorable.  One morning we took a walk around the estate and down to the vineyard to check it out.  The walk started out with feeding some of the animals and petting the sheep.  Wyken Hall is an amazing place and I had the most wonderful time there for my Christmas away from home!       

Gingerbread House

  For something festive to do I wanted to attempt a gingerbread house.  I bought my ingredients mixed them up eventually got something that looked like gingerbread dough and stuck it in the fridge overnight to chill.  I made a gingerbread house once as a child but it was a pre-made one with only minimal assembly and decoration required so this was an adventure for me.  So last night I rolled out my gingerbread cut out the pieces with stencils and baked my house.  Today I made my icing and attempted to assemble the house and it went less than stellar.  I would show you a picture of the finished product but sadly there was no glorious gingerbread house to show you in the end just a pile of gingerbread and icing.  So my gingerbread house making skills need a little work but it was fun to attempt.  At work on Friday it was pretty empty with most people leaving for the holidays but there were a few of us to hold down the glasshouse.  We got a shipment of butterflies for the butterflies in the glasshouse event occurring later in January.  The butterflies arrive as chrysalis and they must be glued to canes and stuck in the puparium like an incubation chamber for butterflies until they emerge.  They butterflies will take a week or two to emerge.  The butterflies arrived in a box and were a little cold from being in the delivery truck to long but once they got warmed up they began to wiggle around.  It was quite the site to see they would wiggle and wiggle moving the cane.  It was been raining a lot lately and the river that runs along the edge of the garden and behind the house has reached a height I have not seen and with more rain today the water will rise even farther.  The flower is just a gorgeous Tacca flower I saw in the glasshouse and had to take a picture of it to show to you.

Glasshouse and mince pies

I started working in the glasshouse this week and am having a great time.  It has been nice working inside where it is dry and warm!  We have been doing general tidy ups of the display house to get it ready for christmas.  We dismantled the narcissus display and put in the new kalanchoe display which should look really nice when it comes into flower.  Butterflies in the glasshouse starts soon in the glasshouse so they are preparing for that getting butterflies and pupea shipped in and waiting for them to emerge.  There was a staff carol in the glasshouse this week which was quite nice with a mince pie snack afterwards.  I tried my first mince pie and am sad to say I didn't really enjoy it so I will not be eating any mince pies this holiday season.  However I did have the opportunity to make some.  One night this week Leila and I made some mince pies.  It was quite the experience our mince pies were a little unconventional in appearance but I think they tasted fine.  Wednesday was our staff Christmas meal so the entire glasshouse team went to the cateen and sat and ate a Christmas meal together.  A picture below shows all of the food.  There was turkey of couse, stuffing, parsnips, potatoes, and a sausage wrapped in bacon which I believe is refered to as devil on horse back?  It was a very nice meal.  To begin the meal we all broke our crackers which are a traditional table setting a christmas.  They look like a giant candy but you pull on the ends and they crack open and inside is a hat, a prize, and a joke.  We all got paper crowns to put on, I got a pencil shapener as a prize, and a really tacky joke.  It was a very nice meal though and has been an awesome week on glass thus far. 

Wisley in Winter

It has been a very chilly second week in the woody department.  Nearly every morning we woke to thick frost cover on the ground which made for a very gorgeous landscape and some great photos.  The week was spent doing warm tasks like cutting down small scraggly trees and sending them through the wood chipper.  Other tasks included general tidy ups, cleaning the tool shed, and leaf blowing.  I had a great time in woody but the chilly weather was a bit much.  I should be used to it from the winters we get in Wisconsin!  Luckily I am off the the glasshouse department next week and should be nice and toasty warm in there.  The fruit department was very nice and invited me to their holiday party Thursday night.  It was an amazing time.  There was some amazing food; I got to try several new things a pastry wrapped sausage, spinach wraps with ricotta cheese, a pastry filled with pear and goat cheese, and my favorite Mario's famous tiramisu.  The night was filled with friends, drinks, secret santa, and some holiday singing.  I made my secret santa a nice holiday wreath and got a bottle of wine to go with I think they enjoyed the gift.  I learned some new songs during our carol and sang some familiar ones as well.  It was such a fun time and deeply thank the fruit team for their hospitality and warm invitaion.

Puttin' up the christmas tree

 Last week I got to go down to the glasshouse and help set up the christmas decorations.  I was excited to spend some time inside on a chilly day but turns out they were different plans.  We got to help set up the christmas tree outside the enterance to the glasshouse.  Though it was chilly it was a lot of fun.  We called in the aboriculture team to help us out to raise the 6 meter or 19 foot christmas tree.  It took quite a while to put it up we used the lift and a bunch of rope to stand the tree up.  Once the tree was up we have to secure it at the top and then fill the base with gravel.  It was a process but worth the effort.  The string got cut off the tree but the glasshouse team never put their tree inside to warm it up so the tree didn't fall out of its bagged form.  I haven't been back to see if it has finally relaxed to its natural shape but it looked quite tacky stuck in its netted form.  After we finished with the tree we were able to walk around the glasshouse and check out the christmas decorations in there and warm up a bit.  The glasshouse looks very festive and my favorite part the christmas tree made out of pointsettias was quite the site to see I would say it is made up of about 100 pointsettia plants while it looks amazing it is a bit tricky to water!  This weekend I got invited by some staff to go to a local driving range.  Who new I would have to travel around the world for my first driving range experience!  We each got  a bucket of a hundred balls and spent the better half of two hours teeing them up.  It was a blast and after that we went out for a nice lunch.

Leaf Removal, Leaf Removal, Snow Removal?





Yes you read right snow removal!  Most of my first week on woody department has been spent removing leaves from the pinetum and the rest of the garden.  I have been blowing off paths with the leaf blower and loading them up to be hauled away.  Also since most of the leaves have now fallen I have been taking down leaf fencing.  In Wisconsin we put up snow fence to prevent the drifting of snow well here at Wisley Gardens they put up small fences around their beds to prevent the leaves from blowing into the beds.  Pretty cool idea!  Back to the snow I was walking to work this morning and it was rather chilly and about half way to work there was some sort of precipitation falling from the sky and by the time I reached the mess room it was proper snowing.  It was such a nice sight to see!  I snapped a few photos, my first England snow!!!  The snow only amounted to a small dusting, but the gardeners headed out in full force to take care of it.  Armed with brooms, blowers, and ice melt two hours later we had the snow contained.  I was lucky enough to get a blower so I got the blow some paths in the snow.  It was a bit over kill but very fun.  By this afternoon however pretty much all our lovely snow was gone:(  It was nice while it lasted though.  A few weekends ago a very large sweet chestnut fell down in the garden most of the tree was removed right away but the root still needs to be removed.  Our task was to break the remaining massive roots so the arboriculture team can come and take care of it.  The stump is massive and weighs a ton so it will still be quite the project to get it taken care off. 





Hello December

You can tell December is here with the colder weather and frosty mornings.  This weekend started off with the Hanbury court tidy up being the fine gardeners that we are we thought we should probably tidy up our own gardens.  So a bunch of the trainees got together and did mostly leaf removal from the grounds.  The boys were having fun playing with the leaf blowers putting leaves in the blower nozzle so we had leaf confetti.  The leaves were really wet from the frost so by the time we got done my hands were wet and frozen.  The back of our house is looking much better with most of the leaves removed and the grass probably appreciates the work as well.  After the tidy up everyone came to the house for some hot drink, biscuits, and I made some brownies as well.  Next I was off to Woking with the girls for a shopping trip I ended up buying some decorations for the house as well as a few small christmas presents.  It was nice to get out and about.  The shopping centers were packed everyone was out it seemed like.  Today in Ripley they had a Christmas Fair that I went to.  There were craft booths set up all along the main road, there were carolers, and santa was there as well.  It was a nice afternoon out to get you in the holiday spirit.  It was a chilly walk to Ripley and back but well worth it.  I have decorated my room with some of my purchases and it makes it feel quite festive and a little more like home!