Estate news – Summertime Bloom

Mick Horkan is head gardener at Lough Gill Distillery. Here, he tells us about the seasonal updates summer brings to the land.

Summer in Sligo is now in full swing; a peak time for gardeners and groundskeepers everywhere, July has landed with a burst of low pressure and days of very heavy rain which can hold very mixed feelings for us.
The wet downpours sadly beat up a lot of tender flowers and give perfect conditions to bring the slugs and snails out of hiding to devour the plants - not ideal when we spend so long planning and planting.

Although these weather conditions can make outdoor work difficult, it does also give us the opportunity to catch up on many tasks such as maintaining our machines and tools and of course to focus on the jobs that have mounted up indoors in the greenhouses and work sheds.

Another great opportunity suited to the wet weather is focusing on our garden waste - we create our own planting material and garden mulch on site. We do this by mixing our decomposed weeds, wood chips, leaf matter and trimmings - of which there is no shortage - with locally sourced horse manure. Doing this in wet weather really gets the moisture into the mix, and all that’s left to do is wait for the worms to work their magic! In time, you are left with a rich organic nutritious compost so teeming with life that Attenborough could do his next documentary on it. This is the stuff that plants adore, and by creating plenty now, we’ll have lots to keep them going for the months ahead.

So aside from the unpredictable weather, what else is new in the estate grounds? You may have read my recent blog post about the experimental batch of barley we’ve planted in the field in front of the distillery. The barley has shot up over the last few weeks and its green stalks stand arm in arm, thick and lush swaying in the breeze. Hopefully in a couple more months, aided by some warm summer sunshine, (let’s hope!) we will be reaping what we sowed.

The rain gives a much-needed drenching to the parched soil in the fields and also to the many newly planted areas on the estate. This moisture is very welcome because here in Lough Gill a lot of the gardens are roofed in by the branches and the leaves of its great trees, which means we get a lot of shade and a lot of very dry areas. Many smaller plants that have been put in recently struggle to compete with their vast network of tree roots and overhanging canopy. Thankfully with a good soak and some nourishing mulch, the young plants stay happy.

I’m very glad to say at last that many areas of the grounds are coming together; we have done a huge amount of planting this spring and summer - most of the plants that were propagated from cuttings and division last year and brought on in the greenhouses have now been planted out into the grounds to fill the beds with flower, fruit and foliage. This means that as these plants mature, more and more baby plants can be taken from them through these means of propagation, be it seed gathering, taking cuttings or simply separating plants into twos or threes and replanting - by doing this we can develop the grounds further and further.

This year we have made a conscious effort to encourage more insects and pollinators to the gardens. Selected areas of lawns have been purposely left so that plants such as clover and buttercup usually mowed tightly have been let flower freely. As much as possible we have cut out spraying pesticides and weed killers to give the nature around us its best chance to develop. This has resulted in great action from swifts and swallows undoubtedly drawn by the increase in insect numbers. Our native honey bee and hoverflies are in abundance, with moths and butterflies in plentiful supply. Most notably the gardens are alive with bumblebees, in the past rarely seen, but this year they are out in their hundreds busily inspecting all the flowers throughout the grounds.

Here’s hoping that after a soggy start to the month, we start to see some summer sunshine creeping in to help our plants to prosper.