On a warm bright autumn in mid-November we took advantage of the covid lockdown rule allowing us out for exercise and booked a slot at Attingham Park our local National Trust property.
We really enjoyed the amazing sense of freedom we felt every minute of our wanderings. It felt great to take a few photos again! Here they are! The last few show some knitted animals placed among a shrubbery for the autumn season.
When wandering around our garden in mid-August we were surprised by how many crocosmias were flowering even though the earlier varieties such as C. ‘Lucifer’ had already faded and were producing their rather beautifully structured and coloured seed heads which will last for months and provide good cutting material. The gallery below features those crocosmias that we enjoy in our garden through August, September and into October for their flowers and then onwards through winter for their stuctural seedheads.
So I decided to wander around the garden with my camera and take photos of each different one, for you to enjoy as a gallery. As usual click on the first picture and then navigate using the arrows.
Our county town, Shrewsbury, sits neatly and comfortably within a loop of the beautiful River Severn. Our hamlet, Plealey is just six miles south of the town, a very convenient distance for us as we are out in the South Shropshire countryside but a short distance by car to our county town.
As we came out of lock down, we decided to have a day off from gardening and go for a walk along the banks of the Severn, starting at the Welsh Bridge following the loop around to the English Bridge and back into the town centre.
We entered the riverside Victoria Quay passing a plethora of ugly signs and followed the quay with its rather gaudy hanging baskets and planters on the riverside fence. It is from the quay that The Sabrina, a pleasure boat, gives trips down the river for tourists and locals alike. On the left are fashionably popular eateries, including one of our favourites, The Armoury. A very popular riverside public house, The Boathouse sits on the opposite bank just before the first bridge that we pass.
We were surprised to see that the children’s playpark had been updated along a Charles Darwin theme, as Shrewsbury is the town of his birth. Along side the park was a new outdoor cafe with seats overlooking the Severn, so obviously we were tempted by takeaway coffees and cookies. Shrewsbury is famous as the home not just of Darwin but also Sentinel steam lorries and here we found one serving snacks and drinks to walkers passing by. We walked further along the bank-side path enjoying views through the bankside trees and hedges. Some of the willows have been sculpted by pollarding by previous generations who trained them in this way to get long straight whips of willow for basketry, a very important craft at the time.
The final picture in this set shows a lady pulling a canoe on a trailer, who we first spotted on the Welsh Bridge on the same route as us. We couldn’t work out why she was pulling it so far with a beautiful river alongside her. It was obviously hard work as she stopped frequently. It kept us amused!
Signs of an early autumn, golden dried leaves at the bases of the lime trees in the lime avenue, were prevalent As we walked further from the park we found these beautiful apartments in a converted brewery – what a view!
Shrewsbury boasts so many bridges of varied style and age.
The oh so ugly railway bridge!
Our riverside walk was full of surprises, such as a clay tile piece of craftwork created by a local school, a beautiful modern building sat above the ancient town walls, the oh so steep St Mary’s Water Lane and a determined rose bush!
We enjoyed finding this piece of philosophy on a brick wall, before we reached the weir which was our point of walk’s end. Here we turned back and made our way back into the town for a well-earned coffee.
Although we have followed this route many times we still find it of interest!
I started my entries for November by commenting. “November takes us deep into autumn, the red hot colours of foliage dominate but little gems of flower colour provide spots of colour that attracts us. This November the dominant colour has changed to yellow by the end of the first week.”
On the second page I continued, “We continue to be busy revamping areas of the garden and began the month reworking the Rill Garden. We cleared the borders and rill and pond of all herbaceous plants. After clearing out the rill it was replanted. In the Winter Garden to the right of the rill we added a new selection of shade-loving plants.”
The two Brunnera are B. ‘Alexander’s Great’ and B. ‘Little Jack’ and between them is the unusual shade lover, Azara splendens.
Two epimedium have been planted in the renewed border in the dappled shade, Epimedium ‘Spine Tingler’ and Epimedium ‘Mandarin star’
“We had a new stable door fitted which we needed to protect with coats of yacht varnish.”
“Half pots we planted with dwarf bulbs and top-dressed with horticultural grit.”
“General views around the garden show just how much colour there still is to enhance the look of our patch.”
“Wildlife is full of surprises as we still see and hear so many bees feeding on our mahonias, fatsias, and ivies. Whenever we garden buzzards and kites entertain us with their acrobatic displays in the sky overhead. Migrating starlings, and thrushes fill the sky with gossip.
“There are usually a dozen or more blackbirds in our patch who gorge themselves on the berries we grow for them, especially our cotoneasters, of which we grow several species and cultivars.”
“We continue to be busy whenever the weather allows, re-developing the two gravel circles in the front garden.”
So that is my garden journal for November 2019, and now we are waiting to see what December brings by way of ending the year.
We were so pleased to get the opportunity to visit Wildegoose Nursery Garden this weekend a time when it is usually closed but two special “Winter Weekends” have been arranged. We arrive in fog which added so much to the atmosphere of the walled garden borders. We felt calmed by the muted sound that fog and mist gives us.
The borders were full of seed-heads of perennials and grasses and even a few rogue flowers. Tiny raindrops hung from every seed and stem, giving plants extra life.
Sometimes in gardens especially in winter it is the tiniest details that are the most beautiful, spidery stems, individual seed-heads and even out of season blooms.
Euphorbias are loved for their chartreuse, lime and lemon coloured bracts and tiny flowers but when these fall in the autumn they reveal the brightly coloured stems which brighten winter borders.
Sedum varieties have the same powerful coloured stems as their seed heads turn black and purple.
I shall share the rest of my photos below – I hope you enjoy looking at all the pics as much as we enjoyed our misty winter garden wander.
It will be a few months now before we next get the chance to explore Wildegooose Gardens and Nursery, as it stays closed now until April.
Following on from our seasonal autumn visit to our smaller garden for 2019 we took a drive up to north Wales to wander around our larger garden, Bodnant Gardens. Join us as we enjoy the signs of the new season on its trees and shrubs.
Within the first ten minutes wandering we had discovered so many interesting plants and plant combinations. We were slowly making for the Winter Garden, one of our favourite parts of the garden. A first for us was a wall trained Gingko biloba which was really striking, as were the glossy indigo berries on this Dianella.
Of course The Winter Garden excels in its season but puts on a pretty good show in the autumn too.
From The Winter Garden we wandered through the open woodland towards the Acer Glade. All along the way trees were warming up the day with their hot coloured foliage and with some the added splash of colour provided by berries. I hope you enjoy my short gallery of photos below.
The woodland paths of gravel and sometimes grass led us to the predominately orange and red Acer Grove, which was busy with photographers and grandparents escorting their grandchildren picking up selections of their favourite leaves, natural jewels of the glade floor.
We left the Acer Grove and made towards the stream which we crossed by a wooden bridge and went upwards into the wooded slope of the dingle, so that we could wander along the many paths and look down into the dingle itself. We found more acers and other colourful deciduous shrubs below the giant conifers. Follow our journal be enjoying this gallery.
And so our day of wandering around the wonderful gardens at Bodnant came to an end, but as usual as we walked towards the gate we had a look at the Hot Garden alongside the stone wall. There is always something worth a second glance here whatever month we visit.
Perhaps one more visit to our other garden Wildegoose to go and if tempted another to Bodnant before the year is out!
Here we are once again delving into my garden journal this time looking at my entries for October, the first real autumnal month. I began by writing, “October tasks, which we have been planning during the time our garden was open for the NGS, began in ernest as the new month begins. We start by clearing the lavender edging to our front garden, where all the plants had become too woody and impregnated with self-seeded perennials and weeds from seeds dropped by tractor tyres. The shrub border behind the line of lavenders also needed a good revitalise.”
Replacing old lavender edging with new and revitalising the border behind.
Giving our mixed hedge a trim.
Resowing grass paths damaged by many visitors’ feet!
Revitalising planting in our vintage zinc galvanised tub, and planting miniature asters.
On the page opposite I carried on, “The leaves on trees and shrubs are slowly changing colour at a slower rate than usual.“
“Berries are colouring up too, adding extra oomph to our patch, cotoneasters, sorbus, malus and hollies.”
Over to the next double page we see photos of colourful flowers of October. I introduced the photos with the words, “October flowers still add plenty of colour to our patch.”
And so to the final page of my October entries in my garden journal, where I wrote, “Further into the month grasses and perennials begin to show autumnal colours. Some like the hostas colour up and then turn to mush so we clear their leaves away before they attract slugs. Others remain firm and upright for months.”
That is my journal for October so just 2 months left to report on for this year.
This is the last visit to the smaller of our two gardens that we have been visiting throughout 2019, so please enjoy my report on Wildegoose Nursery and Garden which we visited on its last open day of the year. We spoke to Jack one of the owners who looked very glad that the season was ending and the nursery closing for another year. He and Laura and the twins were off on holiday the day after our visit.
The colours of the autumn flowers was so intensely beautiful and the light on the day of our visit enriched them further. The bright pink Persicaria amplexicaulis in a new cultivar to me, ‘Amethyst’.
There were signs of autumn to remind us of the season! Pumpkins and gourds, trees and shrubs showing unusual shades of pink-red.
In places the dying seedheads of perennials contrast beautifully with the autumn leaves on the shrubs.
I shall finish off this report of our visit with a gallery of my photos. As usual just click on the first photo and then navigate using the arrows.
For my next post in this series we will return to Bodnant, the bigger of our two gardens this year.
Here we are back at the NGS garden, Gregynog where you left us just starting out on our exploration of the park’s woodland. We wandered past the rose hedge along the gravel drive before turning off to the left along a gravel track which took us past mature trees, both conifers and deciduous, with an understorey of shrubs. Autumn colours were beginning to show in their foliage.
Acers beneath the tree canopy provided bright splashes of colour.
We soon found ourselves having to cross over the driveway to enter the woodands and almost immediately came across the lake. We began to meet several other couples and families taking advantage of the weather and the woodland trails, as well as a few more serious runners using the “Green Gym”. We took the path that took us almost all around the lake and then took a side track, grassed underfoot, into the woodland itself. We walked beneath mature wrinkled Birches which let plenty of light through to allow an understory to grow away happily.
After walking half a mile into the woodland the pathsides were a mass of tall growing golden leaved brackens. The tallest were the same height as Jude, the Undergardener.
On the wood floor beneath the trees a carpet of colourful fallen leaves gave a soft surface for us to walk on.
A final surprise were the dens built around and against the tree trunks by young visitors enjoying the special woodland atmosphere.
Leaving the woodland we could see the hall through the trees, and then we discovered the “Green Gym”, where wooden gym structures awaited the fit and healthy visitors.
So that was our day out at Gregynog, a completely new garden to us and one we would enjoy visiting again.
Another NGS garden we visited last summer is called by the wonderful name Gregynog.
Gregynog is situated in the county of Powys and just has to be worth a visit sporting such a magical name, like something out of the Hobbit or a Hans Christian Anderson tale. Winding lanes eventually led us to a scented drive lined with roses. Here we gained the first glimpses of the half-timbered hall itself and the brick-built reception buildings. October light helped us to appreciate the garden, woodland and buildings.
The gardeners here certainly know how to prune and shape common shrubs to give them an extra edge. The first two photos are of Cotoneaster, trimmed to domes.
The garden around the front of the hall afforded us more opportunities to enjoy the gardeners’ pruning and trimming work.
The low sunlight caught this stand of asters lighting it up from a distance and as we walked closer to look we spotted this wonderful old seat, carved from a fallen tree.
We continued around the building all the time getting views of the hall above us.
We then came to a walks sign directing us to choose a walk to follow and we chose to make our way to the woodland walks and lake. We walked back alongside the hedge of scented roses at the side of the driveway, taking in their delicate colours and rich aromas.
As we reached the end of the row of roses we turned towards the woodland walk, aiming towards the lake, passing an Acer grove along the way, but this is all in part 2 of these posts about our visit to Gregynog.
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