As 2012 ends and 2013 begins it seems appropriate to look back at the twelve posts I made based on monthly wanders around our garden. So please enjoy my selection of 12 shots. Just click on a photo to see a larger image and slide show.
Hope 2012 has been kind to you. Wishing you all a Happy, Healthy and Peaceful New Year.
The last month of 2012 and therefore here is the last post in the “wander around our garden” series. December was a month that started wet and cold and quickly got wetter and colder. We have found ourselves carrying on regardless – we weren’t going to let the weather beat us. So we donned warm waterproofs and busied ourselves clearing soggy perennials and pruning shrubs.
The birds are suffering from lack of natural food in the surrounding countryside so are flocking to our feeders. They add so much colour and song. This year’s flocks of Long Tailed Tits and Goldfinches are much larger than in recent times. Mixed tit flocks have reached over 70 in number at times and finch flocks up to 25. So we are kept busy regularly topping up the seeds, nuts and fatballs. As a result of the poor harvests of berries and fruit in the woods and hedgerows we have had invasions of large flocks of Blackbirds into the garden and already our shrubs are stripped of their produce. The blackbirds are aided in their berry stripping by Thrushes, Redwings and Fieldfares. All the red berried shrubs were denuded first, leaving not a single berry on our Cotoneasters, Hollies and Mountain Ashes so they are looking a little less colourful. They have now started on their second choice berries – yellows and whites.
There is still an amazing amount of colour in the garden with some flowers still going strong. This Hebe just ignores whatever the weather throws at it and keeps on flowering. When a frost comes these delicate looking flowers prove they are not delicate at all. They stand to attention even when coated in frost.
These small Hypericum shrubs, similar in size to the Hebes, perform on several fronts with flowers still apparent, berries showing several colours on the same plant and leaf colour which gets richer as the weather gets colder.
Odd flowers of Rudbeckias appear throughout the winter way outside their peak flowering period. They are like little bursts of sunshine.
Other plants are meant to be winter flowering and we look forward to these each year. Mahonia japonica exhibits its long thin upright racemes of buttercup yellow flowers with the added luxury of a beautiful warm scent, somewhat reminiscent of pineapples.
The glossy, dark hand shaped leaves of Fatshedera are a perfect foil for bright summer flowers in our Shed Bed, but it produces its own much more subtle flowers throught the winter. They are the palest of cream with a dull orange centre. They look as if they should emit the mouth-watering aroma of vanilla but that is sadly only in my imagination.
After a deep frost these flowers loose substance and flop, hanging lifelessly until warmed by the sun.
The starkness of winter structure exposes simple shapes and patterns working together. This yellowed sword shaped leaf of a Crocosmia cuts dramatically across the curved metal seat back.
Sculptures take on a new life. Our ironwork ferns rimmed with frost particles curls through the whitened grasses in the Stump Garden.
Seating areas look less inviting!
Right down at the bottom of the garden the summerhouse looks sadly at the pool which sits frozen solid at its feet.
Similarly the water in the birdbaths is often frozen. Each morning as I wander down the garden to feed the chucks I take a detour to add warm water to the birdbaths to melt the ice.
Frost decorates ornamental features giving them a new winter look.
Frost highlights the overnight toils of spiders who weave webs around sheds, nest boxes and insect homes.
There is little to harvest in December but we harvest various prunings. Taller thicker branches will be used as bean poles, smaller branches as pea sticks and to support perennials next year, and these spiral willow stems will be part of some sculpture that I am planning. Bamboo prunings will give us our own bamboo canes. Our first real crop of canes! That should save a few air miles!
Whatever the winter has in store for us, we are well-prepared. This pile of hardwood logs, oak and birch, will keep us warm and cosy and its scent of woodlands give a good welcome. And outside the chimenia patiently waits with its own fuel supply for us to venture outside to garden and enjoy a coffee break in the winter sun. Alongside the sculptural fire bowl adds further interest.
And what is happening in our borrowed landscape in December? Sheep seek nourishment in the paddock and provide a little natural fertiliser for the grass, and the wheat fields sadly sits waterlogged, growth at a standstill.
Sedum spectabile “Autumn Joy”. If you had looked for autumn flowering sedums in gardening books 20 years ago that would be the variety that would invariably have popped up. Today things have changed so much.
Thanks to the work of garden designers from all over Europe such as Piet Oudolf and Tom Stuart-Smith, who have been seeking out new and imaginative ways of using herbaceous perennials, we have the choice of many. Different flower colours. Different leaf colours, textures and shapes. Different ways of changing their flowers as autumn moves into winter. The photo below illustrates how Piet Oudolf uses Sedum at Trentham.
We have been adding many to our newer borders at home and in the communal borders on the allotments and now is the time to look and see how many we have and how we have used them.
The first selection is from our garden at home, the first two illustrating our favourite way of using them with grasses. The extreme contrast in flower shape – the flat umbrellas of the Sedum with the tall spires of the grasses – make them good companions and the colours of the grasses both in their green coats and in their dried winter cloaks enhance each other.
Up at the allotments members have donated many different Sedum which we have planted within the communal gardens.
And finally I can’t resist sharing a few shots taken in other people’s gardens.
So there we have the sedums. Stalwarts or stars?
Savill Garden is a special places. Wandering around, its paths leads you to surprises, gentle places, sudden views and unexpected delights.
At last we have got around to visiting the Savill Garden. It was worth waiting for! The new visitor reception is an amazing building, a single storey space under a long, sinuous roof shaped like the tail of a Whale.
The Savill Garden is situated on the edge of Great Windsor Park and is just a small part of the Royal Landscape. We followed the recommended path around the garden so that we could see the effects of Autumn throughout.
In most areas of the garden, Savill had the typical look and feel of a stately home garden, both in plants grown, choice of design features and border arrangements, but hints of newer thinking were showing through, such as the use of grasses and new perennial plantings.
A true highlight of our visit to the Savill Gardens was the surprise at coming across this modern water feature. It looked good and it sounded good.
Although we visited the gardens at Savill in the Autumn one of the most colourful areas was the Winter Garden, already showing many interesting features. So the next post will be about the winter Garden in Autumn.
This is the penultimate garden wander for the year and what a colourful one it is. The weather has turned cold with daytime temperatures failing to reach double figures and night time temperatures only just above freezing. Some days though do please the camera, with deep blue skies in between storms.
This rich red oriental poppy never fails to impress even this late in the year.
Several of the plants that feature in the November garden seem to sport odd shaped flowers. The Strawberry Tree, Arbutus unedo has flowers that hang like pearly cream bells. Cyclamen hederifolium have curious fly away petals while Shystostylus flowers hang on gently curving stems.
Roses seem to be blooming away giving us brightness for most of the year. Many that started blooming in late May are still flowering now and they are producing buds in readiness to flower right through to the end of the year.
At the moment I pass the wonderfully colourful corner of the Shed Bed, where grasses have coloured up intermingled with the dries flower heads of Eryngium and Agastache. It has to be my favourite November patch in the garden.
Having passed my favourite corner I pass our trees as I go down to to the bottom of the garden to feed the chicks. Their bark textures and colours change every day. This birch’s chocolate coloured bark is peeling back to reveal snow white smooth bark below, like a white shirt beneath jacket collars.
It seems to be a special year for cotoneaster berries, with every variety covered thickly in readiness for arrival of the winter migrant thrushes.
There is something very special about the freshness of the flowers of the Fatsia, with their creamy, greeny whitish colours. They always look to me as if they should smell of vanilla and be edible!
There are difficult decisions to be made in the November garden. Which seed heads to cut down and which to leave for their looks and wildlife value is perhaps the most difficult. How could you possible cut this clematis down when it looks this good? We tend now to leave perennials standing unless or until they fall and become soggy. Once they do this they endanger the lives of the plants they may be smothering. To me the idea of “putting the garden to bed for winter” just doesn’t add up. A garden is for 12 months, all of them
Wrapping the greenhouse in its winter jacket of bubble-wrap is the least favourite of all of our gardening tasks. This Novenber we started on a cold day knowing that as we added the thermal layer to the greenhouse we would heat up as well. But the sun came out and we got too hot. We started off wearing fleece jackets over jumpers but by the time we had finished we had shed both these layers and were down to tee-shirts.
First we collected the rolls of wrap from their summer quarters – the woodshed, and piled them up outside
Next we attempted to begin hanging it inside the greenhouse over specially positioned strings and wires. The bubblewrap then attacked Jude, the Undergardener.
Eventually Jude managed to overcome the wrap and get on with the job in hand, lining the sides and then hanging it over strings tied across the roof. Soon the temperature increased.
I hope these plants appreciate it!
Let’s us finish our November wander with a couple of richly coloured beautifully lit views across borders, and a quick look across our borrowed landscape.
The tenth post in this series of wanders around our garden already! Just two to go! What shall I do for a monthly garden post instead next year? Any ideas for me?
October started off with days of endless heavy rain but after a fortnight it changed to steady drizzle. A bit of sun would be welcome right now.
The first frosts have visited us forcing us to bring the Aeoniums, Echeverias and our other tender plants under cover. We shall have to keep them safe in the “bubble wrapped” greenhouse, by giving them virtually no water and removing any dry or damaged foliage and when the temperatures drops below -15 C give them additional snug coverings of fleece and bubble-wrap. Another sign of autumn is the log delivery which was tipped off the back of a truck onto our drive mid-month. We sorted them and stacked them around the front door. The wonderfully evocative woody aroma of oak and birch trees mixes with the sweet scents of the woodland floor. The scents of the season.
We visited the gardens at our favourite nursery yesterday, The Dingle at Welshpool, a superb autumn garden on a sloping hillside leading down to lakes. (Look out for my post in the next week or so) As usual we returned with a few acquisitions – a tiny orange Kniphofia, Cornus canadensis and Clerondendron bungeii.
We have planted the Kniphofia with a trio of bronze-leaved grasses and near to our darkest blue Agapanthus. As the “poker” is flowering now, its head of tubular orange flowers glows alongside the Agapanthus’ developing seed heads of blue and pewter.
Sometimes autumn hues aren’t just provided by deciduous trees changing the colours of their leaves but by foliage on perennials, grasses and shrubs. Euphorbias are a fine example, as are grasses which have the added bonus of seed heads. Look out for the pic of our Pentstemon Huskers Red which always surprises with its deep red autumn explosions.
But amongst all this red hot foliage we mustn’t lose sight of the flowers that continue to add colour to the garden. There are now fewer so each one is a precious jewel.
I shall finish off with a few pics of autumn coloured leaves, just what you expect in October! And then take a look at one border and take a walk down just one of our many grass paths.
September is a month I love for the richness of its colours which are intensified by the lower light of early Autumn. But It is a month I dislike as it marks the end of summer and initiates the dropping of temperatures. I enjoy watching the fruits and berries ripening and their changing colour. I am saddened by the silence in the sky as Swallows and House Martins leave us for warmer climes. Leaves begin to show signs of changing their colours too and in September we are given hints of what is to come.
Throughout the September garden we find individual buds and flowers hanging on after the thrusts of the summer lush display. Droplets of moisture sit on the blooms as the first frosts melt away.
These little gems of individual blooms which are flowering out of season add so much colour to the borders, flowering alongside those plants which are traditionally the true flowers of September. Two flowers which we look forward to in early autumn are Lobelia tupa and Salvia uliginosa which display unusual colours and shapes.
The light in September creates a different atmosphere, no longer the direct overhead light of the summer. Now there is increased contrast between light and shadow.
Our grasses begin to come into their own in September. Their seedheads glow and their colours get paler and more silvery.
I shall finish my September wander with a few plant portraits.
The garden is still full of colour, texture and patterns but is missing the life flying above it. The Swallows, House Martins and Hobby have left the daytime sky quieter. At night we miss the cries and calls of the Little Owls even though at times we curse them for keeping us awake.
We return to Barnsdale Gardens every few years on a trip down memory lane. Barnsdale was the garden of TV gardener Geoff Hamilton the nation’s favourite gardener for many years. He was the gardener on the BBC’s “Gardeners World” programme so he visited many gardeners’ homes every Friday evening for years. He was the first truly organic TV gardener and as such he promoted these sound garden principles and backed them up by conducting experiments and sharing the results on his show.
As well as Gardeners World he made several series of gardening programmes based on making gardens such as “The Cottage Garden” and “The Paradise Garden”.
He sadly died at a young age when taking part in a sponsored cycle ride for charity, but he has never been forgotten.
The Barnsdale Gardens still display all the model gardens Geoff made and others have been added since his death. The garden and the nursery attached are run by his son and daughter-in-law. His other son created this bronze sculpture that graces the garden.
The trees that we saw Geoff plant many years ago are now impressive specimens and display interesting bark colours and textures.
One of his favourite flowers was the Day Lily and many remain in the gardens still. Coming a close second as his most popular garden plant must be the rose.
A popular feature of “Gardeners World” was Geoff’s do-it-yourself projects – he was always making furniture and garden features, to try to save his viewers money. Below is his garden bench with matching herb coffee table made from recycled pallets with old roof slates built in as coasters.
He also constructed this compost bin disguised as a beehive and accompanying garden store, both created from recycled wood.
He even made a water feature from an old copper water cylinder!
Although he encouraged gardeners to construct things for their own gardens he also extolled the virtues of craftsmen and his garden diaplays many works by craftsmen local to Barnsdale. In particular he brought locally made furniture into the garden.
Productive gardening – fruit, veg and herbs – played a big part in his programmes, magazine articles and books. Several of his productive plots are still at Barnsdale, such as an allotment, the Ornamental Kitchen Garden, an Elizabethan Vegetable Garden. the Fruit Orchard, an Apple Arch and Herb Garden.
Geoff was definitely ahead of his time, encouraging organic principals and attracting insects into the garden. he recognised them as pollinators and predators of garden pests.
He featured plants such as Achilleas, Heleniums and other hot coloured flowers, and using lots of different grasses. These are all popular now.
Since Geoff’s untimely death the garden has continued to develop. His son, Nick and daughter-in-law have created new gardens so now Barnsdale is described as “39 inspiring gardens, all in one place”
A sign of just how popular and influential Geoff Hamilton was is the fact that his book on Organic Gardening is still in print and has been updated and revised on several occasions. He was a great believer in the importance of compost and found all sorts of ways of making it efficiently. How about this brick-made composter. The bricks would absorb warmth from the sun and heat up the composting material inside and speed up its decomposition.
I shall end this visit to Geoff Hamilton’s Barnsdale with a few more views of the garden.
Our garden in August is a bright, colourful place full of lush growth, rich scent and so much wildlife to enjoy. Our wild birds are mostly quiet at present as August is the time when they hide away as they go through their annual moult. They have gone to ground and gone silent.
Above our heads however avian activity is busy and exciting. The Swallows and House Martins are feeding up in anticipation of their migration south. The sky is full of them, but the screaching of Swifts is absent as they began their own long journey a few weeks ago. For a few days there is a gap in the sounds – we miss them for their excited calls and aerial displays.
The calls of the young Buzzards can be heard above the Swallows and Martins, as they excitedly search out thermals and discover the joy of riding them. The Peregrines have reappeared now that their breeding season is over so we can watch the adult pairs rising in ever-higher circles until they disappear from view. Our eyes become incapable of seeing them as they become smaller, become dots and are then gone. They have the luxury of far better long distance vision than us – they will see the movement of their prey from hundreds of feet up in the air. A real treat is to spot them as they stoop, travelling down at speeds of over 200 miles per hour with a pigeon in their sights.
Yesterday when deadheading in one of our borders we were surprised by a low-flying, high speed Green Woodpecker who zoomed close to us, just a few feet away. A real treat!
Insect life is flourishing. On any warm bright day a variety of insects can be seen hunting out nectar and pollen. Butterflies, bees and hoverflies are attracted to Buddleias, Alliums, Salvias, Nepetas, Lavenders and Echinops. There are so many Peacock Butterflies around at the moment but you can’t have too many of them. The Holly Blues are much scarcer and flit continuously rarely seeming to settle.
Bees and hoverflies are attracted to our Lavender hedge which borders the lane which passes in front of our garden.
The ponds are full of life with shoals of young fish basking in the shallows, diving Beetles and Boatmen moving up to the surface and back to the bottom regularly. On the surface Pondskaters pace out the length and breadth of the pond surface. Young newts regularly appear at the surface take a gulp of air and drop back down. When Jude the Undergardener nets the duckweed and blanket weed from the pond she catches newts every time. She is delighted with every newt that graces her net. I am convinced that removing the weed is an excuse for her newt catching exploits. In August the majority of newts Jude catches are youngsters.
The front garden is looking good! So much colour! The Hot Border is HOT!
The “Beth Chatto Garden”, our gravel garden, is full of interest with Agapanthus taking centre stage. These Agapanthus were actually bought from the Beth Chattos Gardens nursery.
Early in August the front garden was dominated by yellow – even Jude the Undergardener was wearing yellow – but after a few weeks all the other colours caught up.
In the back garden the growth in our Secret Garden is exuberant to say the least. The foxgloves are going over but the achilleas, lychnis and alliums are still giving us a full performance.
Elsewhere in the borders of the back garden the seedheads of our Snakebark Acer add rich reds, Crocosmias give every shade of yellow, orange and red, Achilleas add subtlety and the spiky Erigeron flowers provide silver.
In the greenhouse tomatoes, cucumbers and capsicums are adding sweetness and freshness to the cut-and-come-again mixed leaves of ours summer salads.
The world beyond our garden is changing this month as in our borrowed landscape the hay in the paddock has been cut and baled and the wheat fields turn gold and are being harvested one by one. By the time my September garden wander comes around the skys will seem empty as the Swallows and Martins will be on their way to warmer climes, but the garden will be getting busier with mixed feeding flocks of titmice and Goldcrests, and others of mixed finches.
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