While planning our November visit to the show gardens at Bridgemere Garden Centre, we did not know what to expect as we were moving out of autumn and moving more into winter.
As usual we started off by looking at “The Cottage Garden” which had been subjected to a big tidy up! Bare soil has been forked over and any weeds removed.
I love gardens in winter and I even enjoy gardening in this season too! When people ask what my favourite season in the garden is or what my favourite season for being out in our garden or for gardening is,I always surprise them when my answer is ‘Winter’.
I love tree silhouettes against interesting looking skies, or when winter light hits their trunks or lower boughs.
Betulas are such potent elements in the winter garden. As well as giving us great sihouettes they are lit up by winter sunlight.
In complete contrast to silhouettes and bare stems evergreens, especially variegated ones add colour and again are very good at catching the light and when they do turning foliage glossy. This is especially true of hollies, and some will also show brightly coloured berries.
The Ilex called ‘Ferox’ catches a lot of light because the foliage is so curled and its prickles have prickles on them. Not a holly to get too close to! The right hand photo below shows how strong some holly variegation is with such extreme contrast of colours.
Grasses seem to be strong features here most months of the year and at this time of year the rays of the low winter sun light them up really brightly.
There were still enough flowers to give colour in November and these were mostly on shrubs but there was one surprising bulb in its full glory.
Fruits looked colourful now on trees and shrubs from the smallest berries to tasty looking apples still hanging on some trained trees. The first photo shows a heavy fruiting crab apple in a rich orange colour.
It seems a good time to finish this post about our November visit to Bridgemere Show Gardens after looking at some tasty looking apples. The next post will be the last for this year so we will be looking out for a garden to visit which opens all year.
greenbenchramblings 