greenbenchramblings

A Wander Around the Allotments in January

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 18, 2012
10 Comments on A Wander Around the Allotments in January

As I decided to create a blog at the beginning of each month illustrating what is going on in our garden, so I have also decided to publish a blog in the middle of each month to show what is happening on our allotment site.

So today we braved the cold and went for a wander. The weather although cold, at five below, was bright sunshine in a clear blue sky. the air felt freezing as it entered my lungs but the sight of the lotties cheered me. As we stepped from the car a kestrel was hunting low between the sheds in search of the abundant field voles. A day never goes by without seeing at least one kestrel quartering the site. A buzzard soared overhead in the thermals created by the warmer air above the cultivated plots.

First job was to fill the bird feeders at the two feeding stations. They were busy with blue tits, coal tits and great tits feeding from the hanging feeders and blackbirds, dunnocks and robins beneath picking up the feed dropped by the clumsy birds above them. All the while we could hear the call of nuthatches in the site’s mature oak and sycamore trees.

Frost sits on the bare ground and helps the gardeners by breaking it down and improving the texture in readiness for a final preparatory rake over. The fine tilth can then be home to seeds.

The plots themselves look very sad at this time of the year, drooping brassicas, frosted leeks and steaming muck heaps and compost bins, the warmest spots of all. The scarecrows have fallen in the recent strong winds, their clothes wet and bedraggled and their structures weakened. Frost emphasises leaf structures, settling deepest along the veins.

The strongly veined wrinkled leaves of the Savoy Cabbages withstand the cold wrapped into tight balls.

Kale defies the cold and stands upright and proud even with ice droplets and frost splattered on their tightly curled leaves.

Sunlight makes the old runner bean pods translucent as they hang on the dead remnants of last year’s plants.

On our own plot the rows of Mooli, Broad Beans and Leeks look delicate in the frozen soil but will sit until spring arrives when they will have growth spurts and give us early crops.

Plastic bottles on canes support last year’s netting and still protect any overwintering crops from hungry Wood Pigeons.

Blackbirds move low across the lotties settling onto any sun-warmed soil and dig for grubs, but this one sat looking sad.

We took a leisurely walk around the “Interest Trail” which took us through or close to most of the community gardens – the orchards, wildlife borders, seasonal gardens and meadows. Near the car park the first green bursts of new life have appeared, the leaves and catkins forming on the birches. The young catkins stand bolt upright at this stage but will soften in colour and structure when they dangle down in the spring.

The purple catkins of the alder sit on the branches with the darker cones.

In the Autumn Garden seed heads of Asters remain long after the flowers of autumn, like tiny dandelion “clocks”.

In the first orchard th frost still lingered strongly on the logpile especially on this old chunk of bark.

When we reached the Spring Garden we were struck by the contrasting leaf texture, shapes and structures.

At the back of this garden the silver tassels of the Garrya hung in profusion and the new buds of the Amelanchier promised early flowers and foliage.

Further round the trail we arrived at the “Winter Garden” where the low rays of the sun sent long shadow lines of the fence right across the border between the coloured stems of the Betulas and the Dogwoods. It also illuminated this peeling bark, giving it the impression of slithers of orange brittle toffee.

The blue spruce looked bluer than ever with the whiteness of the frost laying on its needles.

Our Winter Garden has so much of interest that I shall publish a blog just featuring it within the next few days, so for now we shall move on to the second orchard where the golden fruits of Malus “Evereste” have escaped the attentions of the winter visiting thrushes but I suspect they will soon be discovered and devoured. The insect stack in the orchard is there to attract beneficial insects who provide our very wildlife-friendly pesticide. The stack should give them some shelter to help them survive the winter cold and wet.

As we wandered back towards the car park we passed through the wildflowers meadows long since cut to the ground, but showing promise for next summer in its tiny seedlings. One lone flower braved the cold – a pale blue cornflower. Leaving the lotties we noticed promises of flowers from the bulbs in the car park border and in the half-barrels in the gateway.

Tags allotments, community gardening, cornus, foliage, fruit and veg, fruit and vegetable growing, fruit., garden photography, garden wildlife, gardening, insects, meadows, organic gardening, ornamental trees, trees, wildlife, winter, winter gardens

garden photography gardening ornamental trees and shrubs photography shrubs winter gardens

Changing Colours

It may be the cold or the blossom may be simply exhausted, but as we looked at the garden today we noticed that the Autumn Cherry tree blossom had changed from a delicate and pale sugar pink to a warm salmon-ginger.

Another change of colour I have recently noticed is related to the flowering quince that brightens up our gateway with its orange-red blossoms with contrasting yellow stamens. We recently brought into the house some twigs to encourage the flower and leaf buds to open. When they did open they opened not as a bright orange-red but as delicate shade of pink with a hint of salmon. Could this be different light inside and out?Different temperatures? Or even the lack of trace elements that the quince gets from the soil which aren’t in the case water?

Tags garden photography, gardening, ornamental trees, shrubs, winter, winter gardens

birds photography wildlife

A Cold Riverside Walk

A walk along the River Severn in Ironbridge, just a dozen or so miles from home, proved a lovely way to enjoy a frosty Sunday morn. the gorge here is so deep that the sun’s rays barely manage to peep over the top meaning unusual lighting and taking photos shooting into the sun. I only had my smart phone camera to hand so the glares across pictures were a revelation.

Very little wildlife shared the gorge with us, mallards and mute swans on the water and a buzzard hunting along the opposite bank floating slowly and gracefully through the tree tops . But we had been treated to a wonderful view of a bright rustic-coloured fox slowly crossing the road just in front of the car. This was no urban fox – the fox shown obsessively on TV programmes – all scraggy, bones showing and dull coloured – no, this was the real thing.

The frost was just showing signs of melting away forming sparkling droplets of water on the bankside vegetation.

Tags Ironbridge, mallards, River Severn, riverside, swans, wetland wildlife, wildlife

garden photography gardening hardy perennials shrubs winter gardens

Winter’s First Deep Frost

Mid-January and the first true frost of the winter. This must be the latest it has ever happened. Last year we had frosts from October right through till spring. I look forward to this coating of white, look forward to a wander around the garden with my camera in hand, look forward to seeing the low morning sun rim the frost on the remaining leaves and seed heads and even a few out of season blooms. Beyond the garden the countryside rested white and still, silent and crisp.

Entering the garden was like entering a different place than we were in yesterday. This world brought to my nose a mixture of comforting scent of wood smoke and tingling cold. It was so quiet and motionless, not even a murmur from moving grasses or bamboos today. Soon though the watery wintery song of the robin arrived and then other robins joined in, each one singing to announce ownership of a patch of garden or countryside. Pleasure to us, a threat to other robins, the true audience.

DSC_0039-2 — The Secret Garden with a gentle sprinling of frost.

Deeper into the garden the sweet scent of the Sarcococca joined the wood smoke, a rich aroma from an insignificant tiny white flower on a dull evergreen shrub. I planted it near the greenhouse door and its perfume scents the air whenever I work in there in the winter. It is a scent that stays in your nostrils for a time after you have left the garden and returned indoors. Today it has filled the garden completely.

The icing sugar frost has settled on berries and buds, foliage and flowers, seed heads and stems.

DSC_0014-3 — Holly leaves rimmed with frost.

An out of season rose frozen in its bud.

DSC_0003-1 — The sun creeps up to melt the frost from the euphorbia.

DSC_0020-1 — Euphorbia flowers hanging on through the winter with the grey frozen pool behind.

Winter sun lights up the leaves of the thornless blackberry which has been evergreen this year.

DSC_0018-2 — Frosted ginger-bread headed sedum.

Frost takes the pearlescence out of the Viburnum davidii berries.

The frost even coats terra-cotta and metal.

Tags foliage, frost, garden photography, gardening, winter, winter gardens

garden photography gardening

More Green on Green

Back in December I posted a blog entitled “Green on Green” featuring photos that were based simply on shades of green all taken in the garden. Here are more to shots to help you through the winter months. Soon the new shoots of herbaceous plants and signs of budburst on trees and shrubs will come along to give a clue of good growth times ahead.

Tags foliage, garden photography

gardening grow your own outdoor sculpture

Meet The Chickens

I often mention feeding the chucks in my blogs, so I think it is about time they were introduced. I decided to take a portrait of each one but they just do not stay still long enough to take a photo. So I gave them a new bale of straw to play with and took shots of them distributing it all over their run.They are a right mixed bunch, my two remaining bantams from my original bantam flock and all sorts of hybrids. the banties lay just an occasional egg in the summer months now as they are old age pensioner hens, but the hybrids keep us, and friends, family and neighbours, in eggs all year.

We had better begin with the leader of the flock, the hen at the top of the pecking order, who is aptly called “Jude” named after my wife, usually referred to as “The Undergardener” in my blogs. Jude the hen is a New Hampshire Red bantam.

The next shot shows “Swampy” in the foreground with “Royella” behind. Swampy is one of our two hybrids called Fenton Blues, so called because they lay blue-shelled eggs. She is called Swampy as she spends a lot of time up in the trees – you might have to think about that for a moment! The Fentons have small crests of feathers which stick out all over the place on windy days making them look like they are experiencing a “bad hair day”.

The next photo is of “Royella” our remaining Silver Laced Wyandotte Bantam from our original pair, who were named Val and Royella after our next door neighbours, Roy and Valerie because their foliage was the same colour as our neighbours hair!

Next we have a group with two more hybrids in the foreground, “Em” the black chuck on the right and “V”, the Sussex Hybrid on the left. The two Fenton blues are behind them with Swampy on the left and “Jo” on the right. Jo is named after our daughter as she has the same coloured hair as the hen’s feathers.

This scraggy bird is “Bluebell”, a Bluebelle Hybrid, who has rather unwisely decided that January is the right time to moult! She is usually a stunning looking hen with lots of shades of bluish grey feathers with a contrasting ginger-bronze breast.

In the foreground of this pic is our original brown hybrid, the friendliest of the bunch, insisting on being picked up every time anyone enters their run.

These next two photos prove that taking portraits of chickens is not an easy task, certainly much harder than I imagined it would be. Firstly here is Swampy with her head a high-speed blur as she attacks the straw,

…. and here is the one that got away!

The easiest hens to photograph are the ornaments in the garden, such as this very round terra-cotta version sat on an old hazel stump on the poolside with a backdrop of grasses and dogwoods ………

…… and this cockerel weather forecaster.

Tags bantams, chickens, garden fowl

garden design garden photography gardening hardy perennials ornamental grasses

Some of the gardens of Tom Stuart-Smith

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 9, 2012
1 Comment on Some of the gardens of Tom Stuart-Smith

Tom Stuart-Smith is one of the best of the current crop of garden designers working in the UK at this time. We have had the privilege of visiting two very different gardens designed by him, one a private garden in Herefordshire and the Italian Garden at Trentham, a Staffordshire garden open to the public.

In his own words “Making a garden for yourself is very different from doing it for someone else. So much of the pleasure is to do with the coaxing and tending, the daily observance of small details and the accumulation of change over the years.”

We visited this wonderful garden in Herefordshire after spotting it in the Yellow Book of the National Garden Scheme. We were firstly tempted to visit as this county has some excellent, interesting gardens and many well-known gardener writers and garden designers have made gardens within its boundaries. But seeing the name Tom Stuart-Smith in the “blurb” made it a must.

It is a garden that is so well designed and planted. It makes you want to wander along its paths, to look around each corner and to study individual plants grown in blocks or plant combinations.

The following photos show the subtle planting combinations and the inviting paths through the garden.

An amusing diversion on our wanderings was this family of shining metal birds striding alongside a border.

What a place to sit, swing and rest while anticipating the pathway into the sea of grasses.

Later in the year we visited Trentham Gardens where Tom Stuart-Smith has redesigned the Italian Gardens, sensitively placing his modern perennial plantings amongst the old structure. So this is the other side of the coin, designing for a large public space.

These borders look equally good in the middle of the winter. But the water is then a bit cold for dabbling ones feet in, even for “The Undergardener” seen in the photo above appreciating the pool and fountain, with the author in the dapper hat and Vicky our Sister-in-Law on the right.

Tags gardening, grasses, NGS, Tom Stuart-Smith, Trentham Gardens

garden photography gardening half-hardy perennials hardy perennials

Fantastic Foliage – Leaf Patterns

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 7, 2012
1 Comment on Fantastic Foliage – Leaf Patterns

On bright days I am always drawn in for a close up look at leaves. The sun displays their underlying structure, their network of veins, the things that give them shape, texture and strength. Zoom in for a closer look or move in close for a wide angled view and the results can be so pleasing. Isn’t Mother Nature wonderful!!! And aren’t plants simply amazing!!!

Tags foliage, gardening, leaves

garden photography gardening hardy perennials

Phlomis – a winter highlight.

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 4, 2012
1 Comment on Phlomis – a winter highlight.

I love all Phlomis. I love the way the stem soar up from the big hairy, bluish-green heart-shaped foliage and I love the way the flowers arrange themselves so neatly on the stems. The dark yellow flowers of the Phlomis russeliana add so much to a hot border and each bloom looks like the hooked beak of a parrot. They arrange themselves in regular clumps up the stem encircling it so neatly. The Phlomis is in the Lamiacea family – the mints – and hails from the Mediterranean, china and central Asia.

But best of all I love the dried stems with their dried seed heads still neatly arranged and standing strongly through the wild winds of autumn and into the deep cold of winter. They are the epitome of architectural plants. I am limited to how many Phlomis plants I can have though as the “Under Gardener” doesn’t like them at all.

In the autumn we planted two different varieties, tuberosa and cashmireana, so we look forward to them to see if they perform as well as russeliana. Their flowers although similarly structured to russeliana differ in colour as they are both pale mauve.

At Trentham the groups of Phlomis planted in the borders of Tom Stuart-Smith’s Italian Garden, give vertical accents in the mixed seedheads still standing in the winter.

All of the following photos have been taken in our own Shropshire garden in Plealey.

Tags phlomis

birds climbing plants garden design garden photography garden wildlife gardening hardy perennials ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture shrubs trees

A Wander around the Garden in January

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 2, 2012
3 Comments on A Wander around the Garden in January

This is the first in a series of blogs which I will write at the beginning of each month through 2012, and will show what is going on in our garden at that time – a sort of record of garden highlights.

So the new year has arrived. January 1st was a dull overcast day, with unbroken deep grey cloud and regular periods of drizzle. But at least it was warm with temperature holding up in low double figures all day. But not a day to perform a photographic wander.

So here I am on the 2nd January with camera in hand to record what’s going on appreciating a blue sky, but well wrapped against a freezing wind. Buzzards are sharing my joy of seeing a big blue sky as they are soaring silently above the garden with none of their usual sad cries. The garden is noticeably quiet, the bird feeders far less busy than they usually are in January. There is just the constant quiet, barely perceptible winter song of the Robin who follows me around and the equally gentle twittering of Goldfinches, Blue Tits and their long-tailed cousins.

Enjoy a walk around with me and my camera, as we take a tour …………