Month: November 2025

Are You Sitting Comfortably? Post Covid no. 7

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date November 24, 2025

A very occasional series sharing all sorts of garden seats found while visiting gardens.It has been several months since I wrote a post in this series but decided to start again and relaunch this very occasional series after receiving some photos of garden benches from sister-in-law Vicky.

Plas Cadnant, the Hidden Garden had some fine examples to sit on or just admire, including a very high backed seat which Jude just had to try out.

The last two seats we found at the Hidden Garden were both white but very different in design. The first overlooked a formal pool edged with bergenias, and could seat a good number of people. The second white seat was much simpler with wooden slats and cast iron legs in a typical Coalbrookdale design.

While on Anglesey we visited the National Trust property Plas Neuad which was on the estuary. We wandered around following a path that would lead us to the house itself right on the waterfront. We only spotted these four seats, the first one was pretty ordinary and looked lost in the huge empty spaces and would thus feel strange to sit on. The best design here was the swallow back seat which was for sale in the nursery.

For the next set of garden seats we need to travel down to Herefordshire near to Hereford itself to another National Trust property. The Weir is just open as a garden without the usual large mansion to visit. It is a garden which is at its best at spring bulb time and it is long and thin following alongside the line of the River Wye. I photographed just these two seats, very different to each other but both lined up to get superb views of the river.

Well, that’s it for now but the next garden seat posting will be out a little closer than this last one.

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Bridgemere Show Gardens October

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date November 19, 2025

This is now the tenth visit we have made to photograph and report on the show gardens at one of the largest garden centres in Europe, Bridgemere. Now that October is over half way through its allotted days we are expecting lots of foliage colours and colourful perennials still performing well for us.

We soon realised we were not going to be disappointed! The only trouble was that we had to dress for colder weather. The Cottage Garden was, as always, good to look at. Dahlias also had a continued colourful presence alongside tall dried seed heads of perennials. From the Cottage Garden we enjoyed a good view of a circular orange dahlia bed and the pair of fastigiate beech trees behind it.

Below is a photo gallery of perennials and grasses

We can’t look at the garden without mentioning autumn colours of trees and shrubs – the yellows, russets, biscuits, oranges, reds and the occasional purple. There are plenty of acers here and they always look beautiful whatever time of the year it is, but they really colour up in autumn.

Look carefully at the photo on bottom right and you will see the domed shape of the acer reflected in the shape of the expertly trimmed dome of box.

I will now finish off this report of the garden here at Bridgemere with the colours of autumn on shrubs and trees other than acers.

I will return in November to report on our next visit to this lovely group of show gardens.

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My Garden Journal October

I began my October journal entries by writing about the signs of autumn and I noted that, “October really does feel like autumn with changes in leaf colours on shrubs, trees and a few perennials. Fungi are another indicator that autumn has definitely arrived in the garden.”

I then shared a gallery of photos taken in the garden.

On the next page I featured another autumn happening which we look forward to so much even though it is a busy time for a while. “This is the time of year when plants are thinking ahead and ensuring their genes carry on in the form of new plants by setting seeds either as simple seeds or as seeds hidden inside fruits or nuts. These can be apples, elderberries or seed pods on trees such as Cercis siliquastrum or chestnuts.”

Below I put photos of fruits and seeds.

Next up was another of my 30 second sketches, the subject being a leaf and berries of an Hypericum.

On the opposite page I featured persicarias, where I wrote, “Persicaria amplexicorus varieties are really strong perennials for autumn when they show us the wide varieties with flowers of different shades of purple, red and pink with tints of orange and other sunset shades.”

Here are some of our persicarias currently flowering in our garden.

Another painting took up the next page, a watercolour of a short length of a branch off a Cercis siliquastrum on which grew two different lichen and a pair of seed pods.

On the penultimate page for October I shared a look at gardening tasks for October. I wrote, “The weather remans good enough to garden almost any day we want to, except for a couple of days when another named storm, Storm Amy, came to attempt to blow us away. Luckily there was no damage to the garden or gardeners.”

Picking apples has kept us very busy after bumper crops.

We have taken rose cuttings and put bubble wrap up to insulate the glasshouse. Ian our garden help has tidied up some of our climbing roses.

The final page for October showed how our shed was progressing. Here I wrote, “Mid-month and the shed has moved on well. We now have a recycled tile roof and part of the cladding fixed to the outside, even though our four-legged foreman slept through part of the time.”

We have reached the end of my journal for October. The clocks change this weekend meaning we gain an hour’s sleep. Then we can see what November brings.