How (not) to create a castle garden
At the beginning of our work at the castle, we made several resolutions, which we have not been able to keep very well. One of them was to ban the cultivation of any plants, whether useful or ornamental. During the renovation, this is nonsense and a waste of energy. I decided to do this, even though flowers are my great love.
When we had an apartment building in Žižkov, I planted flowers on all the balconies. Once, when we went on vacation, my brother-in-law was tasked with watering the flowers, poor guy! When we returned, he told me, "Well, that was the first and last time." While watering, he counted four hundred flowers😊. Here at the chateau, at first I didn't want to bother with mowing the lawn, let alone planting grass on bare ground. We are planning to do some landscaping in the future, so everything will change. But as we all know, "forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest, and rules are there to be broken," so today everything is different!
It started back in September, less than a month after our first visit to Nemilkov. A kind neighbor brought me a basket of tulip bulbs. I was supposed to plant them somewhere so that they would bring us joy in the spring. And so we began to landscape part of the area in front of the castle. At first, it seemed like it wouldn't be too difficult, but oh boy. In addition to lots of stones, the soil in the area contained objects that one would not expect to find there. Bricks, plastics, glass, broken paving stones, fragments of various containers, pieces of iron, and even old shoes. This complication with the tulips confirmed my original resolution that it really wasn't sensible to plant flowers at this time, when we had our hands full with clearing out, moving, securing the buildings for the coming winter, and God knows what else.
The "flower bed" project took several days.
But spring arrived... The sun began to shine, everything turned green, and even snowdrops and violets bloomed on our long-neglected land. I couldn't resist and gradually succumbed. It started with trees. We decided to try a few trees. It takes a while for a tree to grow, so there's no point in waiting. We ordered ten spruce seedlings to try out. However, due to some mistake, they brought us ten small packages of ten pieces each. They also didn't forget to add that the trees had to be planted quickly so they wouldn't wilt and dry out. By the time we got to the ninetieth tree, I was in quite a bind and didn't know where to put them all.
And then it quickly followed that "appetite comes with eating." I received many other seedlings and cuttings of beautiful flowers from other kind neighbors. I even visited "paradise" several times, as I named the garden center in Sušice😊. I also brought cuttings of flowers and ornamental shrubs from my cottage in Slapy. Today, we have trees, ornamental shrubs, herbs, and even onions and zucchini planted everywhere. We have dahlias, cress, African marigolds, zinnias, montbretia, asters, geraniums and petunias, flowering cacti and succulents, and many other plants that I don't know the names of. In "paradise," I bought rhododendrons and azaleas, from which I took cuttings and am trying to propagate them. In addition to hundreds of different conifers, we have added alders, honeysuckles, boxwoods, and thujas. However, our main mentor and great historian does not like fast-growing conifers, saying that they do not belong in the castle garden, so I will have to replace them in the future with old varieties of fruit trees and other rarer woody plants.
My favorite place – the "cutting room" and herb garden.
This is the first time we have grown zucchini. It grew on its own on the compost heap.
Immediately after arriving from "paradise," I found a dignified place for the rhododendrons.
Everyone can imagine how much time it takes just to water the plants in this year's hot summer. And what if we run out of water? We naively thought that the Pošumaví region would be rich in rainfall. But the opposite is true. It is not for nothing that the nearest large town is called Sušice. It rains more often in Prague than here. One day, we will hopefully have a solution for collecting rainwater in proper water tanks, future ponds, but now... First, we pumped all the water out of the cellars. Then we used all possible barrels and containers to collect water from the gutters. What will we do when that runs out? We'll probably take a barrel on a wheelbarrow to our neighbors and beg for water. Our first unplanned castle garden is worth it, after all.
We use Afrikány as barriers at the entrances to cellars. No one would fall into the water in the cellars anymore.
