Back once again with a look at my 2022 garden journal to see what we have been up to in the garden and to see what the garden has been up to.
On the first two pages I considered signs of autumn in our garden, firstly changing foliage colour followed by our fruit that needed picking and storing.
On the first page I wrote, “October is a definite autumn month and we have signs of the season putting on a show.”
I shared a set of my photos of autumn colour in our garden.
On the second page I noted that,“Fruit picking is now coming to an end as we pick the last of our blackberries, our late apple varieties including heritage types and of course our varieties of pears.”
On the next double page spread I looked at some of the jobs we did in October and on the opposite page I shared photos of some of our fastigiate trees. I wrote, “Having only a quarter acre or so to garden and putting in lots of trees, we reached the stage of planting more fastigiate trees and shrubs.”
On the left page I wrote, “We had varied jobs to complete this month, including re-vamping the green roof on the shed, adding new plants beneath Cornus mas, replacing our edging of grasses down our central path. We also added new plants to our plant boxes in the drive entrance to reflect coming seasons.”
Below the photos I added, “We top-dressed the Shade Garden with composted bark and pruned the climbers there.”
The next set of photos features some of our fastigiate trees and shrubs.
Over the page to the next double page spread and I share a sketch I created with Derwent Inktense Pencils of a seed head of a crocosmia. I wrote, “Crocosmia grace most of our ‘garden rooms’ in late summer with bright cheerful yellows, oranges and reds and in autumn their seed heads stand proud in rich browns with hints of red and orange.”
On the page opposite I looked at some of the asters we grow in our garden. We refuse to sop up to the ‘DNA botanists’ who insist on renaming plants we know and love and whose old botanic names we have known for so long. They have given asters three new names all of which are too ugly!
I wrote,”Think of autumn flowering perennials and asters spring to mind. Whatever the botanists want to call them they will remain asters for most gardeners. Their beautiful cheerful daisy flowers come in many shades of pink, blue and purple plus of course various whites. Here are a few of ours.
Onto my final double page for October and I considered evergreen broadleaved shrubs. I wrote, “Shrubs with glossy colourful variegated foliage look good all year, but in autumn they seem to become more lively, more colourful and more glossy. We have several pittosporum and coprosma around our patch. Let’s begin with pittosporum.”
So now onto the last page for October in my garden journal 2022 so the next time we visit will be in November when autumn will be well established. This page concerned coprosma and I noted, “In more recent years we have started growing several cultivars of coprosma. We tried them a few years back and they failed in the wet, cold winters. As our winters have become milder newer cultivars are much more successful and are growing well.”
greenbenchramblings 
6 replies on “My Garden Journal 2022 – October”
❤️ Your garden and Garden Journal are both stunning ❤️… Thank you for sharing 👍
Regards Ann Parton
I enjoyed this. I didn’t know the word fastigiate and had to look it up. It doesn’t flag its meaning as some unknown words seem to.
Not an easy word to drop into conversation!
Well that’s one of the most autumnal rich collection of photos I’ve seen in a long time. Visited Winkworth Arboretum this week and most trees are still green. The pittosporum are so beautiful: such a modest gem of a plant.
A friend actually gave me an Ashmeads Kernel to eat recently, which was rather beautiful ,with an unusual perfumed flavour.
We are enjoying an extended autumn but the strong winds predicted for us this week may change all that. I agree that pittosporum are so underrated -they are indeed and no-one mentions their unusually coloured flowers.
Never fails – you post & share your garden blog/journal? I bookmark things to learn more about, assess what will work in my area, what I need to learn more on/remember that YOU first told/introduced me to and remember….sheesh! I have empty books of left over from school days, partially used, notebooks, journal books, sketchpads – (that’s what ‘clean out what you brought home from school at end of semeseter! looked like for me! – and the crate full of boxes of partly used, still perfectly good, colored pencils, crayons, pencils, charcoal – for every year – for my kiddos? I was BLESSED by father-in-law who was a teacher – who showed up with ‘gift box’ to celebrate the start of the new school year for his grandkids and also – stressed! by the ‘this year’s list of supplies’ put out by school, for each kid/grade – I have enough medium and color tools to last my life and 3-4 more lives, too – if only – I just buckled down and started to – try – once more – to be – sorta – artistic – – your posts both remind me of this reality/the doability of it/resources available and my long held hope/fear, ‘oh..I WISH I was artistic – but I’m not – never worked out before, that’s not my gift – ” instead of just making a binder to hole punch pages of writing/drawing on and plop into it – no matter what – you inspire me to be better but also, to cut myself some slack, here and there, and focus more on what I really care about – which just now?
Blackberries – how my mama loves blackberries – I have dehydrated ones – forget apple cobbler in crockpot for our Thanksgiving – I’m gonna make Blackberry cobbler in crockpot – why? Because, i have the resources and I know I can – thank you for your post, that reminded me of that! ❤