Do remember that you can now visit the site for nothing (except on event days) and whatever the weather it’s dry in the barns, more sheltered in the walled garden and warm in the tea room! We have put a selection of gardening and plant books in the tea room for visitors to look at too.

We have plants for sale now; the pink primroses are really pretty – see them growing in the walled garden orchard.

Our order included herbs such as thyme, mint, sage, winter savory and hyssop. The flowers include lavender, hollyhock, foxglove and geum.

We will grow them on for a month or so in our lovely cosy poly tunnel and then they will be ready to go out on our plant table by the visitor centre.

Two of the varieties sown have particular relevance for Cressing. They were developed by Frank Cullen, the final occupant of Cressing Temple before the Council took over the site in 1987. He was a seed merchant and ran a successful seed business at Cressing and Witham in the first half of the 20th Century. Between the wars he spent some time developing new strains of seed, including the sweet peas Air Warden and Winston Churchill - along with his other passion for breeding thoroughbred horses and greyhounds. We thought we would give his sweet peas a try this year, so hopefully they will be giving a splash of colour and glorious scent in the Cullen Garden in the summer.

When it is complete we can tie in all the roses, honeysuckle and jasmine and prepare the ground beneath which is, by necessity, taking a bit of a pounding.

I will post a picture of the completed trellis when it’s done, but in the meantime here is a reminder of the old state of affairs.

The wall dates from about 1540 and much of it is still intact, including a stretch complete with the original coping on the West side. Over the years some thugs and opportunists have moved in as you can see in the picture, so we decided to take charge again!

Although the weather has turned incredibly mild this week, there is also a lot of wetness around – too much for us to think of venturing on the borders, but weeding along this long path was ideal. The ground was soft so the weeds came out easily but we stayed mud free and relatively clean on the brick path.

One plant that we want to preserve growing on the wall is Parietaria diffusa, or wall pellitory. This is a rather unassuming plant in the nettle family that just loves growing in old pavements, walls and piles of rubble. It is often found on damp old church walls. It used to be a very important herb, used m

edicinally to treat kidney problems and bladder stones – because it grew on stone it was an obvious assumption for people in the middle ages to believe it would help with kidney, bladder or gall stones. 

I’m afraid it looks very sorry for itself at the moment, with nothing left but last year’s herbaceous stems. But it will soon spring into life again and will have no trouble getting around I can assure you!

This was one day’s work where you could see where we’d been and it was really satisfying to see the result. Now we just need to plant something fragrant and beautiful to grow all along there. Any suggestions (must be pre 1600 of course). If you visit us in the summer you should see this part o

f the garden looking much prettier.

The list of seeds available at the present time is below and we will be continuing to update the information on it:

And then waiting for all those enticing little packets to arrive in the post – the perfect way to beat the winter blues.  We will be ordering seed for lots of plants that have either gone missing from the garden over the years or are in short supply.

We will let you know how we get on and whether we would recommend any for you to try in your own gardens. Check out our plant table later on in the year and you could take home a plant with a history and something a little unusual.

The garden section of the website is currently being developed but we felt that we could start this blog before that’s finished to keep you up to date with what’s happening in the gardens here.

This week the walled garden has been covered in a light dusting of snow. Despite the weather we have completed a number of major tasks since Christmas: the vines in the vine border have been pruned, the berberis hedge by the back gate which suffered badly from mildew last summer has been cut back hard and then mulched and we finished cutting at least 12” off the top of the hawthorn hedge around the knot garden today – some of the thorns are still lodged in our fingers!

You can find us on Facebook too. Just type in Cressing Temple when in FB and the page will be displayed. It contains lots of pictures and information about the gardens and plants.

Do keep looking at this page and your comments are welcome.

Happy New Year!

Jane & Rebecca