This is what we achieved in the Storey Gardens during February 2023:

• Prepared for Yellow Crocus Day on 25 February.  This included sweeping the steps down to Meeting House Lane, potting up plants for sale, moving the pots of crocus to the Plants for Sale area and laying out a visitor trail around the borders.  Click here to read a report of the event.
• Removed more ivy from the Meeting House wall, dug out ivy roots, bagged up the topsoil then planted foxgloves and other young plants in the area.
• Cut off large suckers from the sycamore alongside the Meeting House wall.
• Cut back and dug out brambles and ivy and removed sycamore saplings from behind the yew hedge along the Meeting House Lane border. 
• Cut off the dead growth from the Sweet Williams and other plants.
• Swept up leaves in both The Tasting Garden and the Copper Beech Garden.
• Removed old leaves from the hellebores to better show the flowers.
• Weeded part of the area in front of the privet hedge in the Copper Beech Garden.
• Weeded along the back of the Bee and Butterfly border.
• Planted blue violas alongside the approach path to the Copper Beech Garden.
• Planted cowslips and divided a large clump of native primroses ready for sale.
• Relocated one of the blackcurrant bushes and thinned the raspberry canes to make more room in the soft fruit bed.
• Created flower arrangements for the Storey PrintRoom Café.
• Cleared the patch in the grass where we sow cornfield annuals, sowed barley in one corner.
• Undertook winter pruning of the apple trees

Plants in flower in the gardens during February included:

• mahonia
• winter flowering honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima)
• winter flowering cherry (Prunus autumnalis)
• winter aconites (Eranthis)
• snowdrops
• crocus (yellow and purple)
• pulmonaria or lungwort
• hellebores
• native daffodils (Narcissus lobularis)
• native primrose
• cyclamen coum