December
Progress has been made with the new Mediterranean garden. The curved wall has been partially built, although is on hold due to the cold weather we’ve been having over the past couple of weeks…
Thanks to Peter Young for the photos
The foundations of the water tanks are going in, and the tanks have now been delivered for the 2nd phase of the irrigation system!
Thanks to Peter Young for the photos
There isn’t much for Head Gardener Dave to be getting on with outside, so he’s keeping warm and getting jobs done in the greenhouses
The gardens are covered in snow, but the dogs don’t seem to mind too much…
October
Sunshine after the rain.
Soup for weeks!
September
The usual Croome sunset…
Thanks to the Saltmarshe & District WI group for visiting the gardens, and for sharing this fantastic photo with us!
August
A glorious Bank Holiday Monday in the gardens.
Pershore Arts group have been preparing their Croome Walled Gardens exhibition, and will be displayed and available to purchase until the end of the season in the visitor centre…
For some reason they call these ‘Turks Turban’…
July
More lines are added to the shop for visitors to browse and purchase.
The gardens are bursting with colour!
Melons, beans, cucumbers, peppers, aubergines and chillis are all growing in the restored glasshouses…
Beautiful indigo blue tomatoes growing in the garden…
A thoroughly enjoyable evening had by all, with the Friends of Croome at our wine and cheese evening last. Thank you to everyone who came and to The deli at pershore for the wonderful spread!
June
We hosted a holistic grazing conference in our new visitor! Lovely to meet all of the group from Pasture for Life NT Croome and National Trust
Thanks to farmer Rob Havard for the photo.
Filming in the gardens with Trilogy Creative Ltd for something exciting. We definitely picked the right weather for it!
New boards have been made and positioned outside NT Croome visitor reception and the walled garden’s gate, with information on opening dates / times and more…
This little guy has been keeping us company at the garden gate…
We’ve got some goodies for sale in our visitor centre (the start of our gift shop), as well as signed books by Susan Campbell.
It was a pleasure to welcome our first garden visit group from Hanley Castle WI into the new visitor centre
There are over 400 scented David Austin roses in the rose garden and they’re in full bloom…
May 2017
There are a few plants for sale in the gardens, including various varieties of heritage tomato plants and the Italian plant Agretti.
The herbaceous border is bursting with colour!
Walk along the gardens newly laid paths and you’ll see the purple sensation Alliums in bloom…
The first roses are out in the rose garden 
Tulips, Tulips, Tulips!
Mmmmm what’s for dinner?
First blossom showing on the espalier fruit trees we planted last year…
April 2017
Take a peak inside our new visitor centre…
The Walled Gardens at Croome Court Pershore Arts exhibition at Number 8 Community Arts Centre was a wonderful display showcasing the gardens. Thanks to everyone involved…
We’ve been briefing NT Croome volunteers about the restoration work and progress in the gardens over the winter. They’ll be talking to visitors and stewarding the tunnels when we reopen this season.
Thanks to Peter Young for the photos…
Work has now finished on the visitor centre, but there’s still lots do in some of the back buildings, like the bothy which probably won’t be ready to open at the beginning of the season. Work will still continue in there and it will eventually become part of our museum / gallery. We hope to open the bothy and back buildings to the public by the summer time.
The secret tunnels are going to be open this season too. We are just awaiting our structural engineers report to confirm that they are safe for people to go down. We also have a bit of safety work to do at the front end of the tunnels such as putting in handrails and so on to ensure they are completely safe, but we hope to open the tunnels soon after the Easter opening.
We have been extending the terrace outside the visitor centre which will need to be completed before we open next week to enable our visitor’s access into the new visitor centre safely.
The terrace allows us to redefine the levels from the back gate all the way around and whilst we’ve been doing that we’ve also been putting in our rain water system that collects all of the rain from the back sheds and delivers it down to the dipping pond.
Firstly we had to get all of the sub ground works in, which is now complete. We’re nearly there!
Aerial photos of the gardens taken in July 2015 and April 2017 by Bright Sky Videos spot the difference!
Bright Sky Videos are back in the gardens getting some up to date aerial footage of the progress…
March 2017
The Irrigation system is the main project which we’ve had to do whilst the gardens have been closed. There’s just over a kilometre of trenches that we’ve needed to dig. When completed It will be a state of the art computer controlled system that will sense the moisture in the ground, and decide if it needs watering and will water the garden accordingly.
We’re currently at a point where we’ve got most of the water pipes in now, the res…t will go in before the end of March. The electrical and data supplies will also go in at the same time. There are 27 service points around the garden which will enable us to tap in to the pressurised water system and mains electrics and there will also be WIFI throughout the garden.
Hopefully by Easter all of the trenches will be back filled and it will be safe to open to the public. If we don’t achieve this in the timescale then we will fence off the trenches that haven’t been filled in. That will conclude the first part of the irrigation system.
Remember that hole we found at the bottom of the garden last year? It turned out to be the remains of what seems to be the last in existence of a George Tod vinery.
We’ve been carefully restoring the back part of the building which is where the heating source is and the seed room. Although the restoration won’t be complete by the time we open, it will be completed during the course of the season and the vinery will be open for visitors to see inside.
There have been various …challenges during the restoration of the Tod Vinery so far, mostly because the building was in such a poor state. We’ve had to literally prop it up as we restored it. There were 2 big cracks either side of the building and it was in grave danger of collapsing. So we had to change our strategy for restoration which is why it’s taken longer than anticipated to do. Also during the process we’ve completely and accurately rebuilt the flue system and the chimney system that lives inside the wall.
One day if we’re able to restore the glasshouse part on the south side we will be able to fire it up again just to see how well it would have worked.
January 2017
Karen catching up with Amy Forster Smith from NT Croome about our new visitor centre, the walled gardens book and plans for when we re-open the gardens from Easter 2017!
Apple tree tags being made by our good friend Judith, have just gone into the kiln…
Jack frost is back!
You may remember last summer we were exploring an archeological discovery of an old greenhouse in the walled garden…well, we’ve been putting it back together over the winter months!
A carpet of daffodils in the walled garden has brightened up our Sunday morning!
