Garden Open Again
We start with the best news!
Stone Lane Gardens has reopened its beautiful arboretum to visitors.
The new systems are working very well, without disturbing the garden’s peace and tranquility. Dappled light still falls through the trees into secret places, now cut through with the freshest greens of bright new leaves and grasses following the recent rain.
We would encourage our Friends to visit soon to enjoy this especially quiet time. That is, of course, if you are within safe travelling distance and your personal situation allows..
We started with a trickle of visitors with numbers growing slowly as we publicise the garden via our local social media hubs. Our next step will be to add some extra temporary updates to our road signs to remind passers-by that we are still here and open.
Please help us spread the word! 
The website is still the best place to direct your friends for our location and practical tips for visits. Paul’s Garden Manager Report, following in this newsletter, has more detail for you, our loyal supporters and ‘Friends’.
Although, we are not able to host the full planned Mythic Garden Exhibition, this year, we are looking forward to the:
The stone path replacing the board-walk on the lower left of the garden is now finished. Having completed it, Nigel, Vaughan and I, are now tidying the area where this path meets the bottom pond. Work here will continue through the summer, making this a much more attractive and accessible area throughout the year.
The bulbs of Scilla, lilio-hyacinthus, growing in a small area on the left of the garden, have been lifted and split again this year with the aim of helping them spread over a larger area. This is something we have done most years but was in doubt without our full volunteer team. In this case, my partner put in the extra hours. We could not have kept the garden in good heart and ready to open quickly without calling in the help of family and Friends. We do urgently need more volunteers to help fill the gaps left by the loyal volunteers who are still ‘shielding’
New aster-like flower introduced to a few areas of the garden. Eurybia divaricata is a delicate late summer flowering daisy that spreads slowly with an attractive leaf. Its small flowers will provide a feature at a time when little else is flowering and it should be a good ground cover as long as the rabbits leave it alone! It is a bit of an experiment, but it could prove a very useful addition to the under-planting and, if successful, we can propagate it ourselves from cuttings.
This year, because of staff and travel issues at his end, our grafts were delayed. As a consequence, they had already put on a lot of sappy growth and needed potting up ‘immediately’. Another call for ‘emergency help’. Local Friends Barry, Janet, David, Ruth and Rachel, came at very short notice for ‘shifts’ 
at the outdoor potting table. I am relieved to report that the grafts are now all in pots in the poly-tunnel. This was a tremendous joint effort and it was only afterwards that I realised just how stressed I had felt about the grafts this year. Our grafter, Richard, is extremely experienced, but growing conditions are unpredictable. This year turned out to be a poor year for grafting. Although he failed to graft the full number ordered, we do now have sufficient stocks to see us through next season, with roughly 1000 grafted trees in the poly-tunnel.
The candelabra primulas we are growing from seed (some for sale and some for planting in the garden) have now been moved to the poly-tunnel we are renting at South Zeal. This generous arrangement, costing the charity only £5 per week, is a cost-efficient way of obtaining much needed, extra poly-tunnel space, at least in the short term.
