Category: colours

My Garden Journal – March

As we entered the month of March we looked forward to increased temperatures both during the daytime and at night .We thought with luck the danger of frosts would be diminishing, although this year we have had few to talk of and none deep enough to cause many problems.

So let’s have a look at my Garden Journal for the month of March.

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“Early in March we treated ourselves to two new Hellebore hybrids to add to our dozens already adding colour to our borders”

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One displays simple single deepest red flowers and the other pale green petals edged with a picotee fringe in deep plum and in the centre a similarly coloured collar of petals. Let’s look at the simpler one first.

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In complete contrast the “colarette” Hellebore shows so much more colour and variation.

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Pleased as we were with our new purchases we were even more pleased to find a chance seedling Hellebore which has sneaked its way into our Rill Garden. The problem is that it has settled in tight into the base of the stone wall of our raised pool. “We were also surprised to discover a beautiful new self-crossed hybrid in the Rill Garden. Each petal is a subtle combination of blush pinks and pale greens, its centre the deepest yellow.” It really needs moving out to replant it where it can be appreciated properly. This photo shows it in its chosen home. We love it for its subtle combination of pink and green with delicate spots, and of course for choosing our garden to grow in. What do you think of it?

My journal moves on to look at the first tulip of the year, this beautiful species one with such unusual colour combinations within its petals. “Our first tulip is out, a beautiful deep red-blue colour. Each bloom is so delicate it seems the gentlest breeze will disperse its petals.”

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I reveled in the challenge of representing its flower, shaped like the flame of a candle, in watercolours with pen and ink detailing. I had great fun mixing so many tints of blues and reds together and even brought in a touches of green.

The bird life at Avocet starred next in my journal. “Wrens and Robins are becoming dominant in the garden. Robins are developing territorial traits resulting in chasing and flouncing. The nimble Wren hunts in every nook, crack and cranny for insects, spiders and their eggs. They still roost together in the pouches we have, scattered throughout our garden. Soon they will be considering them as potential nesting places.” It will be interesting to observe the changes in behaviour and attitudes towards each other when this change of emphasis occurs.

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I quoted a further passage from Jenny Joseph, “March is certainly coming in like a lion – a roaring beast. After the gale had torn wider and wider the covering to the sky to let the blue in, it was a bright sunny enticing outside world.” In my journal I wrote “But for us here in Shropshire we have had no strong winds at all, just sunny days alternating with cloudy damp days and cold nights.” But March was to prove these words to be dreadfully premature, for as the month was preparing the way for April to follow in its footsteps we did indeed get gales lasting several days and taking us into April. This strange atypical weather isn’t helping the garden, and definitely not helping us as we prepare for our first opening for the year on 16th April. I noted this in the journal, “This is confusing the garden. It doesn’t know which way to turn. Plants are behind where they should be. Few Tulips or Daffs have displayed their blooms. Leaves on the Acers are showing little inclination to burst from their buds.”

As my journal closes for March we are preparing for our April opening and we could do with some help from the weather and from Mother Nature herself! We can only wait as spectators and see what April brings with it.

Tags garden journal, hellebore, hellebores, March, robins, spring, spring bulbs, spring flowers, spring garden, wrens

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The Wonder of Willows – part three

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date March 26, 2015
4 Comments on The Wonder of Willows – part three

So for the third in my posts about the wonder of willows we move to our allotment community garden site, Bowbrook Allotment Community (www.bowbrookallotments.co.uk)

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Here we grow many different varieties of Salix, willows with different habits, leaf shapes and in particular coloured bark. but before I move on to look at these I thought I would reminisce a little and cast my mind back to my childhood where willows played an important role. I lived in the vale of the River Severn in Gloucestershire and here, the lowland nature of the farmland meant that ditches had been dug for centuries around field boundaries to help with drainage.These ditches, and indeed every stream and brook was flanked with willows. These were pollarded and regularly harvested to be used by local craftsmen and women, the basket makers, trug makers and hurdle makers amongst them. But to me as a country lad they meant places to search for wildlife, to hide from the fishes I was angling for and in the case of the old giant hollow trunked willows they were dens to hide in. Below is a picture of a little clump of such pollarded willows in Herefordshire we spoted on our journey back from Croft Castle.

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Most of our allotment willows grow in our Withy Bed designed to help drain a particularly wet patch of land but mostly to provide vivid colours when they are stripped of their leaves in the autumn and winter months. We also grow them to help drain a wet part of our Winter Garden. The photo below was taken looking through the willows towards the white barked Betulas and the coloured stems of the Cornus (Dogwoods). As well as draining this area so effectively they add so much winter structure and colour of their own to the picture. In the second picture of these same willows you can see they have just been subject to their annual haircut.

The contorted willow below is one of two being trained up tall to weep over the top of the path behind the Winter Bed to form an archway.

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Each spring as the weather gets a little more conducive to outside work a group of us have our work cut out pruning so many willows, some we coppice and others we pollard at different heights. We have about twenty different cultivars here to enable us to achieve the effects that we are after. It takes a small team of volunteers a day’s work to get the task completed, resulting in some aching backs the following day. The first pair of photos shows a pair of before and after shots of one of our yellow stemmed coppiced willows.

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We set off with a wide range of pruners from small secateurs up to hefty loppers and slowly move from one end of the Withy Bed to the other with a good few tea breaks. We find it helpful to be bendy and wriggly to get in among the willows, bending low to the coppiced stools and reaching high to the tallest pollards and every combination in between.

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The prunings created when we cut them are used around the site to make structures and to create plant supports. But for this year many have been used while developing our new wildlife pond. The photos below show the prunings being kept fresh by being lain into the pond and illustrate the range of colours available to us.

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We have Violet Willow growing in the allotment’s Spring Garden which was a cutting off our tree at home and after four years it is a beautiful specimen which has sparkling silver catkins in Spring.

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Last year we created a Fedge with the prunings to give us a brightly coloured living willow fence. This acts as a useful windbreak and also hides part of the site’s manure/compost compound. In the winter when I took these pics it doesn’t hide much but the diamond shaped trellice effect shows up.

The final post in this series about willows will show how we have used some prunings from home and from the allotments to create a children’s play feature.

Tags Bowbrook Allotment Community, communal gardens, community gardening, community spirit, pruning, recycling, recycling in the garden, willow, willow features

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The Wonder of Willows – part two

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date March 19, 2015

For part two in this series about the wonder of willows we start in our own garden at our home “Avocet” in Shropshire. The first photo shows our striking, architectural Salix erythrocadium flexuosa with the orange coloured tips to its thinnest branches. Together with the colour, the amazing curling, spiraling branches impress everyone who sees it.

Close by our Violet Willow is equally impressive with its almost black stems which develop a white bloom in the winter. In the late winter and into early spring it produces strongly contrasting sparkling white catkins.

As the group of photos below show we have trained this as a pollarded specimen with its branches pruned down to the pollard stumps at about 8 to 9 feet. This is just tall enough to help us appreciate its catkins against the ever changing sky and also to make pruning easy.

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In late February or early March each year we prune it hard to give it its skeletal pollarded shape.

These two photos show how much material we pruned off it this year and the amazing range of colours.

Apart from these two specimen willow trees we have this ground hugging Salix variety that barely rises an inch above ground level.

Tags ornamental trees, pollarding, trees, Violet Willow, willow, willow pruning

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The Wonder of Willows – part one

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date March 16, 2015
2 Comments on The Wonder of Willows – part one

We spent a cold February day at the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust reserve in Gloucestershire, Slimbridge. Work was going on coppicing and pollarding the many willows around the site. It is so good to see this ancient countryside craft still being practised. Many of the willows here at Slimbridge are ancient but there is plenty of planting of willows going on all the time. When the trees have been cut the wands are used around the site. In other parts of the country the willow prunings are used in cottage industries like basket making and hurdle making. Larger pieces are also used as fuel. Willows are so useful but also very beautiful, the branches of no two ever seem the same ranging from greens and yellows to oranges and reds. One in our garden has even got black branches which develop a white bloom on them in the winter, making it a beautiful addition to our garden.

The photo below shows a grove of willows through an observation hatch in a hide.

The photo below photo shows a craftsmen head down sharpening his tools and having a break from pollarding these ancient willows. The wands when cut are delivered around the site where they are used to make screens which allow the public to walk around the site without disturbing the wildfowl and waders feeding in the lakes, scrapes and estuarine mud.

There is evidence of recent coppicing and pollarding at every turn.

The pair of pictures below show a freshly cut willow and another showing strong regrowth.

Some of the older willow trees line the main paths and looking close up you can see the gnarled bark. Some are hollowed out so that in extreme case only a tube of trunk remains.

Enjoy this little gallery of photos of individual trees.

We came across groves of small willows pollarded at about 4 feet high. When freshly cut they look like a busy crowd of people.

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The bowls of ancient willow after years of being subject to regular pollarding create a perfect moist area for mosses to thrive.

So there we have it – a brief appreciation of the willows at Slimbridge. They have an important role to play in these wild areas but of course they can also star in our gardens. But, as they say, that is a different story. Soon we will need to pollard and prune the many willows we grow in the community gardens of our allotment site. I shall post a blog celebrating those willows soon.

So there we leave Slimbridge with its wonderful willows and look forward to my next post about willows, featuring these versatile trees growing in much smaller places.

Tags coppicing, pollarding, trees, wetlands, Wildfowl and Wetalnds Trust, willow, willow structures

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My Garden Journal – February

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date March 13, 2015

Here we are with part two of my post featuring my garden journal, where we can look at what was going on in our garden in February.

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The first entry in my Garden Journal for February shares another quote from Jenny Joseph, “The next day, after a morning as closed in as ever, something must have shifted in the upper air, for suddenly there were distances and some weight was lifted from my head.” The first photos in this month’s journal were of startlingly white Snowdrops. “Bulbs send their tiny bright flowers out to greet us. Tiny but precious gems.” was my accompanying note.

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I also featured Primulas this month, “2015 is going to be a good year for Primulas. These two were flowering in the first days of Feb. Our plants of the native Primrose have been busy spreading their prodigy. We have seedlings in the gravel, in borders and in cracks in paving. Many are producing tiny flowers.”

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The first day of the new month was spent in the garden and what a wonderful day we had. A bonus day outside in mid-winter is so welcome. We pruned the climbing roses, trimmed down the old growth of perennials to reveal the fresh green shoots eagerly waiting to burst into growth with the onset of Spring. The plant that never fails to impress is the Sedum with its virulent fresh growth waiting thickly at the base of last year’s cut down stumps.

The tall elegant stems of grasses are now cut close to the ground after their winter display. Even the gentlest of breezes has encouraged them to dance, their stems swaying stiffly but gracefully and their seed heads far more fluent in their dances. They will soon be back. In my journal I noted “Cutting down the grasses is a task I do with mixed emotions. They become old friends in the garden and provide homes for over-wintering wildlife. Ladybirds especially love the shelter of their stems.”

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We like the month of February, as both Jude the Undergardener and I suffer from S.A.D.(seasonally adjusted disorder) and mid way through February we can spot a change in the light and literally feel an improvement in light quality and with it an improvement in our mood. I am sure the garden feels the same as all that future growth waits underground to burst forth and all those buds lie waiting on the resting bare branches of the deciduous trees and shrubs.

Birds are showing signs of getting themselves prepared for the rituals of spring that awaits them. Blue Tits are exploring nest boxes already with two boxes already held by two pairs. Collared Doves, those invaders to our shores, entertain us by filling the sky with their acrobatics designed to impress their mates. They fly diagonally backwards into the air!

In my journal I wrote “It is always heartening to hear the first signs of the “Dawn Chorus”. Top billing goes to the Song Thrush. This early in the year it has already started to stake his claim through song. By the end of the month he is joined by Blackbirds singing from high points on trees or buildings. Wrens are also now singing to mark their territories but their songs emanate from deep inside shrubs.”

Our attention is drawn to the wildlife pond from mid-February onwards as it is around this time that we start to hear the deep croaks of the male frogs calling the females in to join them in the water. One evening coming in from the garden we made a plan to clear the leaves and any winter debris from the pond the next day before the first frogs arrived. But they beat us to it for as we went into the garden to do just that a pair of mating frogs was in residence and close by lay a large glob of spawn. Our job became more difficult as we tried not to disturb their nuptials. My journal notes “February is also the month for mating frogs with their deep croaks heard from everywhere in the garden, “The Frogs’ Chorus!” We love frogs in the garden where they act as great pest controllers. Some move into the greenhouse once they leave the pond and work in there for us too. Free labour!

We can still enjoy the coloured stems of Cornus and Salix and the coloured textured trunks of the trees. The Betulas glow white with hints of silver, cream or salmon, while the Prunus serrula shines gold and brown. The brightest of all though must be Cornus “Midwinter Fire”. Late in this month however we begin the task of coppicing and pollarding, hard pruning to give us bright new stems with brighter colours in the year to come. My journal says, “It is also the time of year when we begin to coppice all our Dogwoods and willows. This is the last we shall see of their brightly coloured stems for a few months.” I move on to make special mention of the Violet Willow of which we have a trained multi-stemmed pollarded specimen which holds a great presence in the garden at every time of the year.

The photos below illustrate how its many colours vary with the changing light.

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These shots show the before pruning and after pruning images, so you can see how hard we prune them down. We certainly need our strong, sharp loppers for this job.

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The final pictures illustrate just how much wood is removed and shows the colours of the branches. All this material will be used for making plant supports and will be useful when we make a willow dome for some friends’ garden in a week or so (look out for a post about this). This is a fine example of recycling in action in the garden.

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We shall make the next visit to my garden journal in the month of March which we hope is full of the promise of spring.

Tags dogwoods, February, frogs, garden journal, garden wildlife, grasses, natural pest control, organic pest control, ornamental grasses, pest control, pruning, recycling, recycling in the garden, salix, spring bulbs, willow, willow structures

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A coastal meadow – Anglesey

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date March 12, 2015
5 Comments on A coastal meadow – Anglesey

On a wet, cold March day it seems a good idea to look back and enjoy some blue sky.

When we spend a few days on Anglesey, an island just off the north coast of Wales we always take a short walk through this colourful acidic meadow. Often it is a good place to see unusual birds such as Chats and Pipits, but on our latest wander along its narrow gravel track it was very quiet. There were no calls from birds, no buzzing from bees and no clicking of grasshoppers or crickets. But the flowers were performing their usual colourful display. As we began our walk we watched a single Chough flying along the horizon in its typically undulating flight. This is a strange bird, jet black like most of the corvids but with bright red legs and a slender curved black bill.

Come for a wander with us and the camera, enjoy the blue sky the sweet scent of gorse flowers and the gently undulating landscape.

We reached the look out tower where we stopped to look out over the sea which was coloured in constantly changing tones and blends of deep greens and blues with silver sparkles where the sun hit each breaking wave. As we turned to retrace our footsteps we heard the first sounds of Chats and scanning the top branches of the heather or rock outcrops we spotted several Stonechat perched bolt upright constantly calling to each other. Gulls wheeled over our heads as they made for their cliff face ledges.

This cliff top walk never fails to impress with its richly coloured meadows and views out over the Irish Sea. We have wandered this track so many times over the years and will keep returning to enjoy it over and over again.

Tags Anglesey, gorse, heathers, lings, meadows, North Wales, shorelands, the coast, the shore, Wales, wildflower meadows

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Croft Castle month by month – part two – February

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date March 9, 2015

So here we are back at Croft Castle for the second wander in 2015 around the grounds for my February post. We thought we would find that little would have changed since our January visit, but we found plenty to see and really enjoyed our wander. Fresh buds looked ready and waiting to burst into new life when temperatures rise and light values increase. Droplets of rain from a recent shower caught the light where they lay upon the leaves of a Hypericum.

In the long mixed border beside the tall walls which enclose the walled garden the first flowers of the year had opened, the delicate blooms of the snowdrops, Galanthus nivalis and a few pink blooms dotted amongst the marbled foliage of the Cyclamen coum.

Gardeners had recently discovered a cobbled path running diagonally beneath the lawn close to the gateway to the walled garden. We imagined the excitement when the first signs appeared or perhaps the chink of a spade heard as it hit a cobble. When fully excavated no doubt it will join up with the network of cobble path to be found throughout the garden and grounds.

Inside the walled garden the temperature rose noticeably and we were well protected from the cold of the winter winds. Enjoy this batch of photos showing what we found within the walls.

The foliage of two different Epimedium plants looked good together, one with its coat of glossy green the other a rich shining bronze.

This old willow with branches rambling haphazardly and randomly caught our attention as its silver catkins shone out in its dark corner of the walled garden. Some branches were severely affected by fasciation causing them to be deformed and tightly curled. Others were subject to gall growths caused by gall wasps.

The blue gate that had enticed us to pass through it in January was open again, and we diverted easily to see what was happening in the bothy and greenhouses.

Snowdrops found the shelter under every tree within the walls and encircled their trunks in white bracelets.

We left the protection of the walled garden and wandered around the borders closer to the castle. We were amused by the sight of this caterpillar up a tree. He was a part of a children’s trail discovering the delights of Alice in Wonderland.

When we had skirted most of the castle we reached the little church which on our last visit was covered in scaffolding due to being subject to renovation. We were glad to find the builders had left the little building in peace.

Little narrow borders feature in the grounds of the church and looked full of promise. For now though we had to be content with the display put on by this wonderfully colourful Euphorbia.

From there we returned to the car park to make our way home. On our next visit to Croft Castle we will hopefully discover many more signs of spring.

Tags Croft Castle., euphorbia, foliage, garden photography, gardening, National Trust, ornamental trees, salix, shrubs, snowdrops, trees, willows

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The Botanic Garden of Wales in the Rain – part two.

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date February 15, 2015
2 Comments on The Botanic Garden of Wales in the Rain – part two.

Welcome back to South Wales where we were enjoying a very wet visit to the Botanic Gardens. In part one we looked at the magnificent glasshouse before taking a break. In part two we carry on in the heavy rain. Winding paths provided us with interesting routeways through the newly planted gravel and rock borders full of interesting foliage all glistening with rain droplets.

The black seed heads of an Eryngium looked in sharp contrast to the pale blue-grey foliage of the Euphorbia close behind. A beautiful oak bench of the simplest design was far too wet to enjoy sitting on. Wet rocks looked full of colour – in the dry they would have been almost monochrome. Grasses always look so good with rock!

Grass borders with every blade moving in waves like a rough sea are here edged with the neatest of low Box hedging. A bench of modern design looked so good against the Box and grasses. Trees in near silhouette looked good against biscuit coloured grasses.

We got soaked through on our walk towards the walled garden but I was still tempted to stop to take a few shots of grasses and my favourite Betulas and some more simple oak block seating.

Jude, aka Mrs Greenbench aka The Undergardener, thought she looked good in this throne! It was a pity her feet didn’t reach the ground – it spoiled the illusion somewhat! It was hard to get her off it! The throne sat under an oak framed arbor with a slate floor, both local materials. Drawings of dragons were etched into some of the slate.

Once in the walled garden, a unique double-walled garden in fact, we enjoyed seeing what the local school children had been up to on their plots. A beautiful bug hotel, a greenhouse made from recycled drinks bottles and an ingenious method comfrey feed all held our interest in spite of the rain.

Once inside the tropical glasshouse we certainly warmed up but my glasses and camera lens both misted up. It took a while for us and the camera to acclimatise. When we did, we were enthralled by foliage of all shapes and sizes, many patterned and textured. Just enjoy the photos.

The few blooms present were bright and gaudy!

When we last visited this garden these old Victorian range of glasshouses were covered in scaffolding so it was great to see they had been renovated and planted up. While the modern curved glasshouse houses temperate plants we were pleased to have discovered the contrast with these old ones housing their tropical plants. It was hot and very humid! The variety of planting was impressive!

The only trouble with the comfort we felt inside the glasshouse was that when we left we had to return to the reality of the wet, cold Welsh weather.

Tags Botanic Garden of Wales, foliage, foliage plants, garden seating, garden seats, green houses, tropical plants, Wales, walled garden, walled gardens

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The Allotments at Rest

We took a walk around our allotment site today to see what was going on and check that everything was okay. We had just watched the site on TV as we featured on a BBC2 series called the Great British Garden Revival. I filmed with Dermuid Gavin a feature on wildlife gardening. It was a strange experience seeing our allotment site on the screen but even stranger seeing our own plot being used as an example of a wildlife friendly garden.

For today’s wander we arrived during a period of sunshine with a clear blue sky over our heads, but by the time we were half way around the clouds had arrived and we were subjected to light but very cold rain. The pure white catkins of the Violet willow in the Spring Garden sit like droplets of rain water after a storm. They are bright enough to be visible from a long way away. They draw attention to themselves very well!

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Probably the brightest of winter colours on any veg plot is provided by Swiss Chard especially the cultivar called Bright Lights. Light catches on the textured leaves emphasising their undulating surface. The other crops still in evidence are sprouts that have overwintered and the new fresh foliage of the Globe Artichoke. These leaves now just a few inches long will expand to a massive few feet in length and the plants will reach a good nine or ten feet in height. Their purple, teasel like flowers will delight our pollinators the butterflies, bees and hoverflies and the seed heads that follow will be a magnet to greedy Goldfinches and Linnets in the autumn. Perhaps the strongest pattern of all was found on Tom’s plot, where he has set out all the old clay drainage pipes that he dug up from his plot.

Both the male and female catkins glow purple on the Alders in the Autumn Garden where their neighbours the Buddlejas are showing fresh foliage with their texture like reptilian skin.

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Last year’s plants in the meadows and borders are now skeletons of their former selves. There is a strong structure linked with subtle beauty in these spent seed heads.

The wildlife shelters sitting in the orchards and meadows hide so many hibernating creatures. They shelter creatures from the winter cold and house anything from the tiniest insects up to amphibians such as frogs, toads and newts, birds like Wrens and Dunnock and mammals including our confident Weasels. A lost glove adds a splash of colour! In our “Dedge” the bright colours of the various Lichen, yellows, chartreuse and greens, glow however dull the light is.

A few spring flowering bulbs are showing spears of green piercing the cold soil. Some are even flowering such as the diminutive Iris reticula and Snowdrops.

Variegated foliage always looks good in the winter when the silver or gold stripes, spots or squiggles shine against deep green backgrounds.

Perhaps it is only right that the most colourful and interesting garden of all at the moment is our Winter Garden. The coloured stems of different forms of Cornus and Salix give us reds, oranges, greens and yellows and even black. The white stemmed Birches are now over 20 feet tall and they dominate this garden. Euphorbias and Hellebores give colour at close to ground level, while the Viburnum bodnantense “Dawn” and Cornus mas provide pink and chartreuse at eye level. Both these shrubs are also powerfully scented.

Elsewhere the coloured stems of a Salix in our Withy Bed shines gold and the Cornus “Midwinter Fire” glow like flames.

Our tour finishes off with a look at this year’s major project, our wildlife pond. We inherited this large farm pond in the summer and are busy tidying up around it in readiness of the work that lies ahead.

This little character is hidden for most of the year under a patch of Chrysanthemums grown for cutting but in winter he appears to cheer us all up.

I shall finish this post with a couple of bright jewels.

Tags allotments, birches, Bowbrook Allotment Community, Bowbrook Allotments, communal gardens, community gardening, cornus, dogwoods, fruit and vegetable growing, salix, scent, scent in the garden, scented plants, willows, winter, winter garden, winter gardening, winter gardens

architecture climbing plants colours garden buildings garden design garden furniture garden photography garden seating gardening gardens gardens open to the public hardy perennials irises kitchen gardens light quality National Trust ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture roses The National Trust trees walled gardens Winter Gardening winter gardens

Croft Castle month by month – January – part two

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 20, 2015
2 Comments on Croft Castle month by month – January – part two

Welcome back to Croft Castle where we were about to find out what lies beyond the blue gate. We entered the space beyond the gate and found immediately to our right one of the gardeners’ buildings from the days when the walled gardens were a productive fruit and veg garden. Today it is a children’s discovery room complete with nature table. A board showed the gardening tasks for the month. Close by hung an old pruning saw.

After a good peruse among the dusty artifacts and sharing our memories of nature tables at primary school we moved on to the old, wooden framed greenhouse which until now we had viewed from the gate. On this visit we went inside. We were delighted to find the old iron mechanisms that controlled the windows and vents still intact. We both find these fascinating and are amazed by the ingenuity shown by the greenhouse designers of that era.

We were pleased to find a colourful line up of watering cans and a very healthy looking Cobaea climbing up wires and flowering profusely. It was easy to see why it is graced with the common name “Cup and Saucer Vine”.

Outside the greenhouse we found a stack of apple trees heeled into a pile of compost awaiting the time when the frozen ground allowed them to be planted. Further old buildings hugged the walls – they were ina tumbled down state. The old window attracted me and my camera but I remain undecided if it is best as a colour or monochrome picture. Any thoughts?

We continued our tour of the main walled garden following the herbaceous borders to discover ancient apple trees beautifully pruned ready for fruiting next season. Their trunks and branches were encrusted with lichens and mosses creating miniature landscapes. Clumps of Mistletoe decorated several of the trees. This is a common parasitic plant in the orchards of Herefordshire. A Mistletoe Fair and market are held in December every year in the nearby market town of Tenbury Wells. They are famous for their mistletoe auctions.

Along the third and fourth walls mixed borders included many shrubs which were well pruned in readiness for new growth when spring arrives. In the central area among the grass willows had been pruned too, cut into low pollarding and coppicing to encourage fresh, long new wands to cut and use around the garden as plant supports or sculpture.

I enjoyed a play with this pic on Photoshop!

We were attracted to the opened seed pods of a Paeony with its four sections of woody shell. I certainly enjoyed playing with the image on Photoshop! Here you can select your favourite of three versions.

The sweet scent of the pink flowers of Viburnum bodnantense reached our noses long before we spotted the shrub itself. Next to it in the border was the giant stalk of the biggest Lilly we can grow in the UK, the statuesque Cardiocrinum giganteum.

In the growing seasons there are some lovely features within the walled garden like little garden rooms, including a pool garden and a rose garden. In the winter they are so cold and bare! But an odd Rose bloom was trying hard when we visited. It sadly offered no scent though, unlike the neighbouring Rosemary with its gentle aroma coming from the tiny china blue flowers and the Lonicera frangrantisima, the Winter Flowering Honeysuckle.

The gardeners have been busy making a huge “bug hotel” which is now almost complete. They have been having fun!

Reluctantly leaving the walled garden through a stone archway, we found small courtyard gardens linked by interesting textural paths. We gained views of the rear of the castle building and its huge water butt!

A further archway in a stone wall took us to a quartered courtyard garden with white benches and heavily pruned rose bushes. A strong wind blew through this area, making life difficult when I wanted to take a photograph of a Primrose flowering well out of season, resulting in a blurred close up of my scarf. Oh dear! But I did manage in the end. Definitely better without the scarf.

Rounding the next corner we could look out over the low stone wall across the meadows towards the lake and woodlands. The weather was not right for exploring these areas, so we decided to save it for warmer times. Above the corner tower an unusual wooden bell tower peered. Against the house wall we found a second scented Viburnum bodnantense heavy with blossom.

The tiny garden surrounding the estate church is often colourful but in winter colour was total lacking. The tower of the church was covered in scaffolding and it looked as if restoration work was well under way. I will share some pictures of this lovely building when the scaffolding is down later in the year.

We finally reached the front entrance to the castle, the massive door protected by stone-carved dragon sentinels. As we retraced our steps along the herbaceous border and stone wall we looked back to get views of the whole castle frontage.

Our next visit will be in February when we will see if anything in the garden changes as the days lengthen slightly and the light values improve. It may be a bit warmer too! Fingers crossed.