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My Garden Journal 2019 – December

My Garden Journal 2019 comes to an end this month, so here are the entries for December.

On the first page I wrote, “December sees most of the berries stripped from our shrubs and trees by dozens of  thrushes including migrants who like our winter weather. A few berries remain to enhance he odd flowers, the grasses, seed-heads and evergreen shrubs.”

Over onto the next page I feature some of the more unusual and very subtle coloured foliage in our December patch.

I wrote, “Unusual coloured foliage of our evergreen shrubs come to the fore even on the dullest of days. Bronzes, browns, blushes, purples, blues, greys and greens with flecks of yellow.”

 

Over onto the third page for December and I talk of how much there is to see in our garden if you look down at your feet! “In our garden in winter it pays to look down. Silver glows and glistens at our feet. Silver leaf markings take on so many shapes and patterns.”

     

So just one final page for my December entries for 2019! Maybe my next year’s garden journal will be completely different?

 

For the last page of my 2019 Garden Journal I wrote, “I love sunny winter days when the low sun catches the colour and texture of twig and bark.” Then I featured a collection of ten photos of the light doing just that to a few of our trees and shrubs.

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My Garden Journal 2019 – November

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.

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Seasonal Visits to two very Different Gardens – Bodnant Gardens

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!

 

 

 

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Gregynog – a garden with woodland walks

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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The Dingle Garden in November

Back to wander around the gardens at the Dingle near Welshpool, for our November visit. We expected big changes after recent strong winds and heavy rain. We did not anticipate seeing many leaves left on deciduous trees and shrubs, but hoped for signs of late autumn colours in foliage and berries.

The first pic at the start of this post shows one leaf that was still hanging on against all odds, even after all our recent strong winds and storms. Below is a selection of photos of flowers still going strong in the woodland garden, some late blooms from the summer and some early winter blooms.

 

Throughout the woodland garden where there was a clearing the ground was covered in low growing perennials often covered with a carpet of fallen leaves.

    

During our visits over the year to The Dingle Gardens there has been an area that has been much wetter than elsewhere, often with water running off the bank across the paths and on down to the lake. On this visit we noticed and heard that work was in hand to add extra drainage systems to rectify the problem.

 

Berries are signs of the year’s end, there to help keep the plant populations viable.  Alongside them in this garden of trees and shrubs there were signs of new life in the form of leaf and flower buds waiting to unfold for us to enjoy in the future.

There was so much to enjoy as we wandered the garden paths that I took lots of photographs, so I thought I would finish our November post about our Dingle Garden visits with a photo gallery. As usual click on the first photo and navigate using the right arrow.

So just one more post to go which will be for our December visit to this wonderful woodland garden.

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After the Storm – snow in December

Mid-December saw the sudden arrival of snow a rare occurrence in recent years. The last time we can remember having any appreciable snow fall in December was back in 2010 and 2011. Sadly I am still recovering from my surgery so really haven’t been able to get out there and enjoy the white stuff. However it did give me the chance to send Jude the Undergardener out with my trusty Nikon, so this post will feature all her photographs.

 

They are pretty good for someone who says she can’t use a camera! Methinks the lady objects too much! Jude the Undergardener has such a good eye for a picture!

Seedheads of perennials gain caps of snow and ice, and light finds places to make sparkle.

        

Twiggy skeletons of shrubs that had lost their leaves managed to catch balls of snow in their branches.

 

Evergreen trees and shrubs gather much more snow and ice around them like thick duvets.

 

Sculptures scattered around the garden change as they absorb the snow.

     

Surprise flowers add tiny patches of colour among the whiteness, roses throwing up surprises through to the end of the year. Similarly the colours of fruits and berries pop up from the snow like “jack-in-the-box”, but this will only last until our winter thrushes consume them.

       

Structures that blend into the background for the rest of the year come to the fore when winter arrives but even more so when snow covers the garden in white. These structures include trained fruit trees, trellises, evergreen climbers and pollarded trees.

    

Looking out of the garden into our borrowed landscape showed that the countryside too had put on a new coat. Looking into the garden there are very special moments in time to catch. This leaf may at any time fall to the ground in a gentle breeze.

 

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My Garden Journal – July

So it is already time to share my July entries in my garden journal. This year in the garden seems to be moving on so quickly. I began my July report by writing, “The arrival of July moves us into the second half of the year and the summer is well established. Colours seem extra rich on bright days as petals shine glossily.”

“One family with flowers that glow are the Lychnis family. Below are two members of Lychnis, the variety L. chalcedonica and another variety L. coronaria.”

“Lychnis chalcedonica “Dusky Pink”

 

“Lychnis chalcedonica “Vesuvius” and Lychnis chalcedonica “Maltese Cross”

 

“Lychnis coronaria”

   

Over the page I move on to look at an unusual Foxglove, Digitalis parviflora “Milk Chocolate” and a berried shrub, Hypericum x inodorum.

“Plant of the month, July, is a special Foxglove or Digitalis, Digitalis parviflora Milk Chocolate.”

“No two flower heads are the same.”

 

“Densely packed flowers.”

“Most berrying shrubs begin to show colour in their berries in late summer through the autumn, but already by July our various cultivars of Hypericum x inodorum have brightly coloured and very glossy berries.”

  

The next plant family I feature in July is Linaria, of which we grow many varied cultivars.

“Members of the Linaria family are always welcome in our garden. We love the way they self seed and hybridise. They display a huge range of colours and petal markings. Linaria purpurea is much loved by bees and hoverflies.”

    

“Our garden is home to other more unusual Linarias too, all with their recognisable flower structure.”

 

“We also grow our native Toadflax, Linaria vulgaris, commonly known as “Butter and Eggs” because of the two shades of yellow that make up its flowers. Bees and butterflies love it!”

Next I looked at plants that are spiky in texture, of which we grow many in our patch as they seem to like our sunny aspect.

“Plants with spikes enjoyed warm, sunny summer days. We grow many eryngium family, the Sea Hollies, with bracts from the palest silver to the deepest metallic blues, of which E. Picos Blue is the bluest of all.”

   

Not all of our spiky plants are Eryngiums however. We also grow Silybum marianum and Echinops ritro.

  

One of the Eryngium family is a biennial and luckily a strong self seeder, E. giganteum Miss Wilmott’s Ghost.

Turning over the page we move on from spiky plants to two much softer more delicate looking plants.

 

“Seed heads are an important element of the Autumn and Winter garden, but this little beauty I found this week while working in the Spring Garden. They are Fritillaria meleagris seed pods. I painted them in watercolours using Japanese wolf hair brushes and fine tipped fibre tips.”

“July sees many of our Salvias coming into their own. We grow most in pots so they can be moved inside for the winter.” I used pencil crayons to draw Salvia Silkes Dream and Salvia x African Sky.

Bright pinks and reds dominate over the page where I featured Begonias and Pelargoniums. Enjoy the colours!

“Begonias and Pelargoniums also have to over-winter under cover so go into the cool end of the greenhouse.”

“Brightest of flowers.”

 

“Textured, marked and coloured foliage.”

Pelargoniums – “Crazy reds and pinks!”

    

 

And that is it for my garden journal for July. My next visit to my journal will be at the end of August, a month when keeping you garden looking good is pretty difficult so we shall see how we get on in our Avocet garden.

 

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Developing 3 spaces in our garden – part 3

The second new area we were able to develop this winter was a very small border created when we rationalised our sheds. The bed was originally used for a selection of mints which we used for cooking so the soil had to be removed and very bit of mint root removed. Some is bound to come back though as it seems impossible to rid yourself of mint in one go. We will have to keep our eyes peeled. As yet we have not named this little patch but I guess it may end up being something akin to “The Old Mint Patch”.

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We began by erecting a screen wrapping around behind the bed and one end and we chose willow hurdle panels for this as it lets some wind through but gives some protection. We also love the natural rural look of it, and have used it effectively elsewhere in our garden. To match the natural look of the fencing we added a border edge of log-roll.

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We planned our planting in three layers. First plantings were climbers, followed by shrubs and finally herbaceous perennials including grasses. The first climber we planted was Trachelospermum asiaticum, chosen for its flowers which are creamy coloured and scented in strong contrast to its dark green glossy foliage. We partnered this climber with a Honeysuckle and a Clematis. Clematis Fragrant Auberon has creamy-white, heavily scented flowers in spring contrasting strongly with its evergreen foliage. The Honeysuckle was Lonicera Spring Purple, where the purple refers to its foliage.

The shrubs we selected were favourites of ours which had graced our wishlist for a few years now so this new, unexpected planting opportunity meant they could now leave their place in the wish list and grace the new border instead. Firstly we planted a Hydrangea aspera, a summer flowering shrub called H. a. “Hot Chocolate”, so we look forward to its lacecap flowers consisting of pink florets surrounding violet florets in the summer, and of course its foliage which is a chocolate colour above and wine-red velvety textured below.

We are always pleased to find space for another deciduous, so we planted a specimen of Euonymus planipes in this new border. We put it in when it was leafless and we spotted its beautiful mahogany long thin leaf buds. Later it will boast bright pink fruits with vivid orange seeds hanging from within, an incredible colour combination.

Our third shrub was an Abeliophyllum distichum, which was showing its gently scented pale pink almost white flowers. We look forward to its foliage turning rich purple in autumn.

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The final planting later to put in place was the herbaceous layer where we selected plants mostly for their unusual foliage but a few will flower. Thus we planted three Saxifrages – S. stolonifera called “Hime”, S. fortunei “Blackberry and Apple Pie” and S. stolonifera “Maroon Beauty”, strongly textured, coloured foliage and unusual shaped flowers. We planted a fern too to link across to the one in the container which I write about later. We chose Dryopteris erythrosora “Prolifica” which features copper foliage each spring. Three Libertias join in to give spikes of foliage some with coloured stripes and white flowers in the summer and autumn. These Libertia are L. ixioides “Taupo Sunset”, L. peregrinans “Gold Leaf” and a third is an unknown species we grew from seed. We finished with our usual grasses, essential in every border, so we placed between the other perennials three Uncinia rubra,

We also had space adjacent to the new bed for a large stoneware pot which matched the  one at the far end of the path close by. We planted this up with a Gaultheria mucronata “Sneeuwwiyje” which I think translates as “Snowdrop”. It sports red stems and shiny dark green foliage and in summer white flowers with hints of soft pink followed by white berries later. Beneath this shrub we planted a fern and a couple of trailing ivies for year long foliage colour and texture. The ivies Hedera “Golden Kolibri” and Hedera “White Wonder”, the names reflecting the colour of the leaf variegation. The fern was Polystichum setiferum “Plumosum”, with soft textured foliage.

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The final flourish was installing a wildlife “village” of varied insect homes, some coming from the old garden shed others newly made.

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A few weeks later we added spring flowering bulbs from pots, a few more grasses and a third Saxafraga, S. Blackberry and Apple Pie.

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We then had to sit back, let Mother Nature and all her soil workers and the weather do their best and watch the new patch develop. Maybe it will develop well enough to appear in my garden journal later in the year.

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The Dorothy Clive Garden in December

So here we are with the final installment in my series of posts where we report on our monthly visits to the wonderful gardens on the Staffordshire and Shropshire border, the Dorothy Clive Garden. We have really enjoyed our monthly visits and every time has been so different with different things to stimulate all the senses.

It has been a most enjoyable series of visits. Next year we will be looking at a very different place in our monthly visit series.

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As we have come to expect, the table decorations reflected the season, as we enjoyed a coffee and cake to launch our final visit for 2016. The borders up against the tea shop wall looked so bare now after them recently being full of the brightest colours possible provided by Nerines. But within a few yards of leaving the tea shop we discovered colour in flowers and buds giving promises of things to come.

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The new Winter Garden has now really come into its own and will continue to impress for a few months to come.

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This rolling bundle of box bushes tumble like acrobats along the hedgerow and by partnering up with two mature trees they frame the countryside beyond. Great fun! The next three group around the bottom of a tree like three young triplets cuddling up to their mother. In the third pic the box balls invite the visitor to pass between them to discover more garden beyond.

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Berries on trees and shrubs will hang on well into the winter depending how poor the weather becomes and how deeply winter sets in both here and on the continent. If weather as far away as Siberia becomes too inclement for the indigenous thrushes, starlings and blackcaps they migrate to our shores forming raiding parties upon arrival spreading countrywide consuming the fruits, seeds and berries in the countryside and increasingly our gardens. Some colours also last longer as birds are a selective lot when they have the choice, red first, oranges next then yellow and finally white and translucent.

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The colours, textures and patterns found on the bark of trees as well as the stems of shrubs take centre stage at this time of year and are lit up by any late year sunshine.

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We associate dried flowers with indoor arrangements in the winter but there are plenty of interesting versions to be found outside, especially if you can find some Hydrangeas like the many at the Dorothy Clive Gardens. The colours are those of faded tapestries.

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Although not great fans of coniferous trees we can appreciate them more in December when their heavy skeletal frameworks show well. Cones and the last of the flowers hang on their solid branches.

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We do however greatly appreciate the silhouettes of tall skeletal networks of deciduous trees.

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We were surprised by how many different fungi we spotted as we wandered as we would normally see them in the autumn. They provided bright tiny patches of colour on old logs placed as border edges.

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So there we have it, a year’s worth of visits to this lovely garden on the border of Shropshire and Staffordshire, one of our favourites and lucky for us within an hour’s drive so very easy to visit. I hope you have enjoyed the Dorothy Clive Gardens and my attempts at recording its seasonal beauty through the lens of my camera.

 

 

 

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Simply Beautiful – 4 – ugly name beautiful flower

Late in the year little surprises appear in the garden to stop you in your tracks. These are often out of season flowerings but beauty can also be found in the way plants gracefully fade away at the year’s end. Piet Oudolf reckons that to be a good garden worthy plant, a plant must die beautifully. When you visit any of the gardens designed by him in the winter you can identify with his idea and he is excellent at using such plants.

These little sparkling garden gems were  brightly coloured a few weeks back with cerise and metallic blue colouring but they remain beautiful in their new winter colours. It is the shrub called Clerodendrum trichotomum var. fargesii. Ugly name but beautiful plant!

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