This will be my final posting about my garden journal for 2025 and then, all too soon, we will move into 2026. 2025 has been another difficult year for us gardeners and as we approach the coming year we cannot even guess at what the weather has in store for us.
I began my December garden notes by writing, “December arrived wet and wildly windy and continued that way for the first half of the month, just giving us a few odd days now and again which were a little more pleasant. Pleasant enough for us to get into the garden and work in areas reachable from hard surfaced paths or bark chip paths.”
This first set of photos shows us tackling seasonal tasks.
The second photo foursome shows us renovating our vintage tools.
On the following page I looked at those special plants that give pleasure at this time of year. I wrote, “There are still flowers giving their all to give us colourful bonuses throughout the garden.”
I then shared my photos of some flowering plants performing at this time of year.
Rosemary Campanula
Helleborus Viola Viola Correa
The next block of photos illustrated some of our winter flowering Clematis.
Clematis cirrhosa ‘Lansdowne Gem’
Clematis napaulensis
I next shared another of my ’30 second sketches’, this time of a Fatsia flower which I described as “A really challenging 30 Second Sketch’.
Over onto the next page I considered the importance of foliage that is so important at this time of the year. “Foliage comes to the fore from December onwards until flowering bulbs burst out with colour. I wandered around the garden in search of interesting patterns, structure and colours in foliage.”
On the opposite page I looked at more foliage and in particular the foliage of Hebes. I noted that,“A selection of Hebes illustrate how powerful foliage can be but, of course, they also give colour from their flowers in warmer times. Their flowers tend to be in many different shades of pink, blue, purple and white.”
Six photos display the variety of Hebe foliage.
The next page has on it just a drawing of mine. I used my Derwent Inktense Crayons to draw a pruned piece of one of our cordon apple trees.
The final page for 2025 takes a look inside our greenhouse and I wrote,“The greenhouse becomes so important in December as it performs several roles. A key job for it is keeping our succulent collection safe from the wet and cold outside.”
The group of photos below illustrate how busy the greenhouse looks when full of plants in need of protection.
“We also overwinter our pelargoniums inside. Some are now several years old.”
That is December over and 2025 too, so next time it will be January 2026.
greenbenchramblings 