We have been lucky to have lived in many countries, among them Africa and Hawaii, and had many gardens - big and small. In Hong Kong, we don’t really have a garden, which makes our gardens at Schloss Pütnitz so precious.

We have a few garden projects that we planned for late February and Early March. One is the vegetable garden, the pruning of countless rose bushes, and lastly a small planting project in the front of the house. Last year, the vegetable garden had a mixture of root vegetables ( potatoes and carrots ) herbs such as sage and rosemary, and also some unsuccessful strawberry plants — more on that later! The flower circle that is front and centre upon arrival at Schloss Puetnitz, has some lovely yellow and white daisies in late spring and summer, but needs winter hardy plants for this time of year….the Ribnitz-Damgarten area has had some snow the last few Easters!

We wanted to get cracking on this project and I had my heart set on Pansies for the front garden circle. It seems Pansies go like hotcakes, here in Germany, but we managed to get the last 23 plants, in a nice mix of purple and white, with a few miniature red ones. We added a few primroses for a dash of yellow and pink colour! Our Schloß Pütnitz Team managed the whole project in about 2 hours - it took longer as we realised the grass had grown up and over the curb stones we had laid 2 years ago.

A few days ago we added lots of compost to the fenced in vegetable garden. The fence is an absolute must to keep away the pigs and deer that roam around in this area. Its lovely to see the wildlife, but I prefer if they don’t nibble on my new green shoots! The compost if from our own compost heap…….our guests at Schloss Puetnitz are so kind as to recycle all the kitchen scraps, including lots of coffee grounds. Coffee grounds are great for the compost and they can also be used to deter slugs if you place the grounds around the edge of the veggie garden. The compost was dug in nicely and we are ready to make the planting rows. We have decided to sow the seeds straight into the ground and we have picked seed varieties that can be planted in Feb and March. This year we have carrots, radish, lettuce, onions and tomatoes. Some have to be under a foil canopy incase we have another frost. For herbs we have a nice mix of Rosemary, Marjoram ( oregano), and Thyme. We already have a nice Sage patch from last year and plan to plant the dill from seed! About those strawberries. Last year , our Schloss Garden yielded 2 strawberries. Yes, we had 2 whole strawberries! We found out that we had neglected to manage the old plants after a bumper crop the year before. we still have some things to learn about gardening in this hemisphere. This year we are going to order the strawberries plants online and our lovely managers will plant them next month.

Now, last but not least are the rose bushes! We have neglected to prune them correctly and now we will pay for it. We are going to have to go in with a hard heart and a sharp pair of shears! We plan several hours of cutting and carting away all the leaves and branches. I had a look today and there are a LOT of very sharp thorns on those branches…….they are not going to go easily!

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