What are our gardeners doing this month? – Our Work Continues

Winter gardening in Europe and around the Mediterranean to keep our cemeteries in good condition continues apace, despite the strange circumstances of this year.

Western Europe

In the Ypres Salient, in Belgium, the fallen leaves of autumn are being swept away. Other main tasks for the month include gapping up, removing weeds and straightening, cleaning and adding compost to headstone borders.

Gardeners at Bedford House Cemetery sweeping away autumn leave, photos courtesy of Eddy Lin.

‘Gapping up’ is the process of removing dead plants from our borders and replacing with new ones. Wherever possible overgrown plants are dug up, split and spread throughout the cemetery to maintain uniformity. The plants are arranged in schemes with the same plants repeating at intervals along these borders.

We need to keep top of these tasks in the winter to make sure that the planting schemes are ready to perform in the following year. These flowering plants are an important part of the unique look and feel of our sites.

Mediterranean

In the Mediterranean the warmer weather means that keeping on top of our turf is keeping teams busy into winter. Mowing, aeration and scarifying – removing dead grass from the turf – are all part of the gardening teams work in Italy, Greece and Egypt.

Elsewhere in the region planting continues as we replace border plants, and replant trees and shrubs which have failed.

The next generation

And in France, we’re helping to nurture the gardeners of tomorrow. Within a decade nearly half of our French workforce will reach normal retirement age.

To help pass their experience and expertise on to the next generation we’re taking on apprentices, many of whom will hopefully consider joining our ranks to build their careers in horticulture.

Steve Arnold, Horticultural Manager WEA France, said: “We need to plan for the future and this is by far the best way of doing this, the apprentices get a good idea what it is like to be working for us,  receive some specific training and we can see how they fit in within our groups. It’s really a win-win situation for all concerned.”

A few of the latest horticulture apprentices who are working with our French gardening teams