So here we are with a visit to my garden journal, this time to look at the pages for November.
I began by writing, “November saw autumn coming in slowly giving us no colourful days but just patches of colour where odd trees and shrubs brighten up. The best shrub for autumn colour must be the hamamelis family, the Witch Hazels. The leaves below are from H. ‘Jelena’ and H. ‘Diane’.
Overleaf we moved on to explore the colourful autumn foliage of our miniature Gingko biloba called ‘Troll’. I dried and pressed a selection that had fallen onto the compost surface of their pot. I wrote, “Gingko bilobas are wonderful trees with a long history, having been around for 290 million years. It is a unique conifer which is broad-leaved and deciduous, and the only member of the Gingkoales family. These leaves are from our miniature Gingko biloba ‘Troll’ fully grown at 2ft tall.”
On the opposite page I showed two tissue paper collages of leaves of Witch Hazels. I wrote, “In a very odd, almost colourless autumn, the foliage that really shows up in our garden is that of the Witch Hazels, the hamamelis both ‘Jelena’ and ‘Diane’. I played around with tissue paper, torn and shredded to create collages. Some leaves remain predominantly orange with deep red blotches and lines, their veins a deep chocolate brown. Others retain areas of green.”
The next double page spread showed us sorting tender plants to go in the greenhouses and opposite I looked at hesperanthas. On the first page I wrote, “November flowers all seem so special, everyone of them either the remnants of late summer blooms or more seasonal ones. Frosts suddenly arrived on the second day of the month, so we were pleased to have given our delicate plants some protection. They are all safe. We had to re-pot some.We made our temporary greenhouse too.”
Opposite I continued, “Hesperanthus flowers provide flowers of shades of pink ranging from pure white to the deepest pink almost red”
Over onto the next pair of pages I shared photos of fatsia and late flowering roses. On the left hand page I wrote, “The palmate leaves of our two different fatsias look good all year round being a deep glossy green with new leaves unfurling beautifully, but come Nvember their unusually structured flower clusters begin to burst into life. They attract late-flying pollinators.”
When writing about our unusual variety called ‘Greenfingers’ I wrote, “The more palmate leaved fatsia called ‘Greenfingers’ has not flowered for us yet.”
On the right hand side I shared photos of our colourful late-flowering roses, and wrote, “Our rose bushes, climbers and ramblings never fail to delight us with bouts of late flowering right through this month. Hips join in to give added interest and colour, as well as feasts for our birds of the thrush family.”
On the final page for November I wrote, “Lots of garden tasks needed to be undertaken towards the end of November. We continued to pick apples and Jude planted up pots for winter interest to replace my aeoniums now snug in the greenhouse.”
greenbenchramblings 