Author: greenbenchramblings

I seems appropriate to publish this post on the first day of the new year, 2024 when I will be preparing for creating the first pages of my garden journal January 2024.

2023 was not an easy gardening year with the weather making things so difficult. Let us hope that 2024 is going to be a good one!

It is hard to believe that we are already looking at the entries for the last month of 2023, a difficult year for gardens and gardeners alike, trying to cope with unusual weather events and mixed up seasons.

Looking below at the first double page spread you may notice that the final page for November is included. This is because my first words for December refer to the yellow grasses.

I wrote,“These grasses remained bright yellow into December, which arrived bringing with it cold, wet days with the occasional blue sky days with frosts cold enough to blacken our dahlias.

“Colourful berries decorated many of our trees and shrubs, and an occasional herbaceous plant.“Colourful berries decorated many of our trees and shrubs, and an occasional herbaceous plant.“

Alongside this introduction to December I shared a set of eight photos featuring some of our berries.

On the next two pages I featured winter bedding plants and opposite that I considered our garden after rain. I noted that,“The winter bedding plants that we plant in pots look bright and colourful until frosts hit. Then they collapse and lose some of their structure. Some become almost colourless, especially the white flowered ones. Our fatsias do just the same.”

I then shared four photos of collapsed bedding plants.

“Amazingly they are revived by rising temperatures when they return to their colourful selves.”

At the top of the next page I wrote,“I love to wander around the garden just after a shower has stopped, usually with my camera to hand. Plants are so good at catching water droplets. At this time of year water droplets hang onto berries and seed heads. One thing to avoid is touching a branch as you compose your photo. The slightest touch and the droplets will drop!”

Six photos of water droplets on plants follow on.

If we look over onto the next double page spread we can see succulents featured on the left page, where I noted that,“Most of our succulents are in the greenhouse now enjoying avoiding the winter cold and wet. Any recent purchases have been potted up into terracotta pots to create foliage displays.” On the opposite page we considered our garden after a storm. I noted that,“We grow three different hamamelis shrubs here in our Avocet garden to give scented flowers in winter. Two are well in flower now but we need to wait for the third one H. ‘Diane’ to catch up. H. x intermedia ‘Jelena’ flowers earliest followed by H.x intermedia ‘Harry’ so both look and smell good now.”

Eight photographs of our newly acquired succulents.

Now we can look at the hamamelis that are currently flowering their hearts out in our garden. Four photos of “Jelena” and four of “Harry”.

Firstly “Jelena”.

And now four photos of H. ‘Harry’.

So that is it for my Garden Journal 2023, but of course tomorrow I will be considering my entries for the first days of January 2024!

As fewer flowers are in evidence as December sets in we rely more on berries and seed heads to provide lots of interest. However, we also grow berrying shrubs and trees to help the birds through the harsh times of winter. Our resident blackbirds and thrushes, song and mistle, enjoy the nutritious berries early on in the winter but when the weather on the continent becomes harsh they are joined by their cousins, including redwing and fieldfare.

The first block of photos shows the black berries of Sarcococca confusa, a cotoneaster, Rosa glauca hips and one of our many Hypericum inodorum.

The next block of photos illustrates the deep glossy blue berries of Viburnum tinus with delicate red petioles alongside our native holly Ilex aquifolium and a lone hip of Rosa glauca.

Below in the first row are photographs of Malus ‘Adirondack’ sometimes referred to as Malus ‘Admiration’ plus rotting apples of Malus ‘Evereste’.

The next row of berry photos shows an Arum maculatum spike of berries just collapsed after a storm, an unripe hip of Rosa glauca followed by two pictures of Sorbus ‘Autumn Spire’.

Each year as our trees and shrubs mature they provide even more nutritious fruit for our avian friends.

December has so far, today being 10th of the month, been exceptionally wet with named storms following each other closely. So far during September, October and November, we experienced Agnes and Babet and Ciaran. Debi featured in November. During December, so far we have experienced storms named Elin and Fergus.

We have actually had very few dry days this month, so it has been difficult to find suitable times to go outdoors to work or simply wander. I enjoy the hour or so following a bout of rain.

I took my camera out for a wander to find droplets of rain on plants.

I hope you enjoy my little gallery of shots taken on my wanders.

One thing to keep in mind when taking such photographs is to ensure you do not touch the branch in the slightest because if you do the droplets will drop!

As far as we know this is the only ‘Ninfarium’ in the UK! Until we researched the word through Google we wondered exactly what it meant. Once we found out however it seemed so obvious! It is named after the famous gardens at Ninfa where climbing roses clamber over ruins. It is currently being remodelled and planted up to return it to a modern version of its former glory by UK garden designer Dan Pearson.

We have been fascinated by this inside/outside garden on each visit to Aberglasney and its incredible range of plants.

The plants grow in beds at different levels and up walls and drainpipes taking advantage of light from above via the atrium. Many of the plants growing here feature amazing foliage but many also have unusual looking flowers.

Most plants here have very unusual or special foliage with colours, patterns and textures. Some work together exceptionally well whereas others need to be on their own to be appreciated fully.

Ferns will always add character to any garden such as this because of the strength of their structured foliage its patterns and colours.

If I take a step back and use a wide angle setting on the camera we can see just one small part of the amazing setting for this wonderful selection of plants.

We can now share my garden journal for the month of November, when we are engulfed in signs of autumn. Hot coloured leaves carpet the ground, and are scattered onto shrubs and perennials. We collect these up and use the autumn leaves to create hedgehog shelters and hibernacula for them. Leaves also provide winter shelter and homes for many other mini creatures. Blackbirds soon realise this and forage amongst them for sustenance.

The first page regarding November was about leaves changing colour and falling. “November this year saw signs of Autumn creeping in, slowly giving us colourful changes. Trees and shrubs are responding to the weather in so many different ways. Some remain totally green, others just networks of bare branches, while the rest are at differing stages of changing colour and dropping leaves.”

Over the page a double page spread concerns itself with protecting our more delicate plants and the few flowers that appear in November.

I wrote,“I always dislike the time when all our succulents have to be taken into the greenhouse to protect them from the cold and wet of our winters. Jude manages to arrange them in an attractive way so they can be enjoyed every day. Firstly we clean and bubblewrap the whole of the greenhouse, put up extra shelving and create our indoor display.”

When looking at November’s flowers I noted that, “Every flower that opens this month seems so special and unexpected, so I took a wander around our front and back gardens to see what I can find.”

Onto the next page and I featured some of our fuschia and wrote,” We have a few fuschia plants flowering well outside in the garden, with several growing in containers so that we can move them into the greenhouse when frosts arrive. One hardy fuschia is growing in the ‘Prairie Garden’, F. magellanica which is still covered in flowers. We dislike the blousy ballerina like fuschia so we tend to grow species. They are far more delicate, with more interesting foliage including a glaucous leaved variety, F. ‘Silver Linings’. Some of the flowers are tiny, no more than a centimetre long. Many of these fuschias are smaller than their more gaudy cousins.”

A look at our November garden wildlife follows on next. Here I noted that, “Wildlife is so important to us in our garden and we feel honoured to be visited by such a large range of creatures. A special treat this month was regular visits by a pair of Goldcrests.”

“We have so many different spiders around the garden, the most conspicuous being the ‘Garden Spider’ with its subtle colours and beautiful markings. Early morning mist, fog and dew highlight the beauty of their webs.”

“There are over 600 different spiders in the UK, many very small and difficult to identify like the one in this photograph. It has beautiful markings and colouring. It may be an ‘Araneus diadematus?’ “

“The wasp nest in a sparrow nest box remained active until half way through November, which is very much later than expected.”

I then shared a painting of a pair Goldcrests that I painted decades ago.

I was looking closely at a little vase of flowers cut from our patch and was amazed at Geranium ‘Rosanne’, and I noted that, “When petals fall and colour disappears we are left with the other flower parts displayed just prior to fruit or seed pouches forming.”

The final page in my garden journal 2023 for November looks again at autumn colour but with a different slant. I wrote, “Think of autumn colours and usually we look to trees but we get almost as much beauty from our grasses. By choosing the right set of grasses you can watch as they turn very slowly from greens to yellows and oranges.” A set of seven photos illustrates this.

My next report from my garden journal will be the last for this year, December 2023.

Wildgoose Garden and Nursery is one of our favourite destination within easy reach of home. Jack and Laura run the nursery and walled garden as well as presenting talks to garden groups and hold courses for the RHS at the garden. Our Hardy Plant Society mini-group for Shrewsbury and South Shropshire hold our final meet up of the year here as many of us know Jack and Laura quite well. We have the garden, nursery and Tea Room all to ourselves as their opening season has already finished for the year.

The garden looks so good at this time of the year so when we visit we have so much to see and enjoy. Jack also gave us an introductory talk highlighting the plants that perform well at the time of our visit, particularly ones we might not know so well.

As in Piet Oudolf designed gardens plants that die down well are important here.

Equally important are late flowering perennials for colour and grasses that provide texture, movement, sound and light catching abilities. It is a real eye-opener when we walked around Wildgoose to see so many such plants.

Dahlias are one of the most effective plants in the mixed borders here and they are carefully chosen for their colour and shapes.

I will finish off this report of our HPS mini-group meetings with some more general views of borders and pathways.

The nursery and walled garden will be closed until the spring when another set of plants will be creating more wonderful views and plant groupings.

Aberglasney was once the subject of a television series entitled ”Aberglasney: a Garden Lost in Time”, which we really enjoyed. It was a four part series which followed the restoration of its dilapidated gardens, shown back in 1999.

We visited the garden when restoration had only just begun and several times since. Strangely this time all the restoration of the house and garden looked complete. In fact parts of the garden were being redeveloped again where plantings had failed.

We enjoyed finding this very sociable bench and the huge grassed area which was a good foil for the tall stately conifers nearby.

We were interested in the planting areas we passed on our way in. The wall was beautiful with ferns growing on the vertical surface plus the sound of falling water.

The Yew Tunnel featured in the TV programme as it was difficult to restore because of the age of the yews. It was just one of the many archways, tunnels and gateways around the property and garden.

Coffee and cake were soon required and we enjoyed some great views from our table to add enjoyment to our refreshments.

After our refreshment break we made our way along a long deep border alongside a stone wall that would lead us to the Old Piggeries, the Sunken Garden and finally the Jubilee Woodland Garden.

The next half hour was spent enjoying another coffee break before we set off to look at the walled garden. This walled garden is divided into two ,’Upper’ and ‘Lower’. The Lower Walled Garden was still mostly productive, growing produce, fruit, veg, herbs and cut flowers.

The decorative borders in both sections were full of asters in lots of different colours all attracting so much wildlife mostly bees and hoverflies.

We left the Lower Walled Garden through a wooden door in the stone dividing wall and entered the Upper Walled Garden which was composed of mixed borders around the edges and central circular beds.

We soon came to the time to return to the car but there was one more special place to see before we left, an unusual garden called the ‘Ninfarium’, half built into the buildings.

This will be considered in a second post about Aberglasney.

Another garden we visited during our September Pembrokeshire holiday was Colby Woodland Garden, which we had visited in the past. Strangely neither of us could remember much about it, so it was like visiting for the first time.

The car park was situated in a woodland clearing alongside the road. When we arrived it was raining incessantly but we decided we could pay our entry and enjoy a coffee.

On the way down to the welcome building we could get glimpses of what to expect. As we enjoyed our coffee and home-made cakes we could see the rain outside was lessening so we made plans of the route we were going to follow. It was dry as we began our wanderings.

The first area we found was “The Walled Garden” which made us hurry up as we both have soft spots for walled gardens because of their very special atmosphere.

We then retraced our tracks for a short walk following a track edged by a stone wall, and made our way to “East Wood”. The atmosphere here was different, cooler and quieter.

There were even a few flowering plants in this area mostly in the first few minutes of our wanderings.

When we left the East Wood behind we followed a footpath that followed the stream and then wound across the ‘Wildflower Meadow’ to access ‘The West Wood’. This area was more of a woodland garden than East Wood.

Some splashes of colour came from the woodland planting of shrubs and perennials.

To add more interest to this already varied woodland at Colby, we came across signs of past industrial activity.

We also found some wood creations, a set of animal sculptures and a collection of interesting rustic seats.

On visits to most gardens there are a few plants that stand out above all the others there. Here are a few from Colby Woodland Garden to finish this report.

It is time to delve into my garden journal where we will be considering the month of October. The month began with a week of warm weather, a little Indian Summer after all. So plenty of fine gardening days to take advantage of.

The month began with higher than average temperatures, climbing at times to 23 centigrade. After a fortnight or so it is predicted to be dropping back to the mid-teens. So we decided to take full advantage of the warm sunny days by getting out on our patch as often as possible.

The first two pages look at firstly the early signs of autumn and opposite cut flowers from our garden. On the first page I wrote, “October is the month when signs of autumn begin to appear especially leaves becoming more colourful, changing from greens to shades of yellow, orange and red. Our fruit trees have fruit mostly ready for picking.”

I then shared seven photographs illustrating the autumnal changes in our garden.

On the page opposite are photographs of cut flowers from our garden in October. I included six photographs and wrote,“Throughout the year we try to have lots of vases around the house full of cut flowers from our garden. Simple glass vases are by far the best.”

Turn the page over and we can see eryngiums featured, “We love Eryngium with their thistle-like character, fascinating cut leaves and the metallic sheen on stems and flowers in shades of blue or purple. They keep their flower shapes as autumn dries them up and they turn brown or biscuit shades. Ours all seem to be at different stages of decline, beautiful decline.”

The double page spread below featured some of our Eryngium dead heads in biscuit and metallic shades. Opposite is a painting I created of a Begonia flower from the greenhouse collection.

I noted that, “In the greenhouse our begonias and pelargonium continue to flower. The Begonias range in colour from creamy white to pure white and from the palest yellow through to deep yellows, oranges and reds.”

Turning over the page to the next double page I featured succulents on the left and rose hips on the right. Concerning the succulents I wrote, “It is during October that we have to take into the greenhouse our delicate succulents and Salvias. Night time temperatures begin to drop. Below are photographs of some of the succulents enjoying staying outside in the second half of the month. Once frosts join lower temperatures we will need to get them under cover.

Opposite I referred to our roses by noting that, “Our roses are giving us colour from the last few blooms and also the hips on several of our plants.”

Below is my sketch of a selection of hips from our garden, created in Derwent Intense Ink Pencils plus Fineliner fibre pens.

Next I looked at a major task we tackled in our front garden. I wrote, “The big task for this month was the re-making of the borders beneath our bedroom window. The border had been virtually taken over by various Crocosmias.”

I wrote, “We planted lots of narcissus and tulips, with smaller spring bulbs such as muscari, chionodoxa and puschkinia.

The tulips we chose were mostly yellow, orange and red.”

Ferns are one of my favourite plant families and thus we grow lots at home where conditions allow. I really enjoyed seeing so many in the gardens at Picton Gardens in Pembrokeshire. Some were the same as we grow whereas others we had never seen before!

This first set of fern photographs feature outdoor growing species.

Within old garden buildings within the walled garden ferns grew happily among begonias, impatiens, nerines, gingers and tropical looking foliage plants.

To be able to see so many different ferns together makes you realise the variation in leaf shape, texture and colour. Similarly stems vary in colour and pattern and can be as thin as wire or as thick as your finger, smooth or hairy.

The gardeners here at Picton must have carried out plenty of research to be able to place them so wisely. They look very healthy the way they are grouped or partnered with suitable plant partners.