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.
Today is the Winter Solstice! A day to celebrate! From tomorrow each day will get a little longer, giving a bonus of extra light. So here is a present of a bouquet of frosted roses.
We delight in every rose bud that appears in the winter months and celebrate each and every one that opens out to present us with a bloom. When iced with a crystal layer of white frost they look even better.
I suppose I shall have to prune them down by half to stop the wind rocking the roots loose before too long, and then it will be a long wait until next May to appreciate these delicious blooms once again.
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.
December hasn’t afforded us many days suitable for lottie gardening, sending us too much rain and flooding the site again for a while early on in the month . In fact the first attempt at working on our plot this month resulted in that too well-known sinking feeling. Algae has turned the soil green again.
We arranged to meet council officers and contractors on site one morning to start sorting out the flooding issues. It was of course raining when we met! Four trucks full of machinery and fluorescent coated workers arrived soon after, champing at the bit to start. Sods law came into play. The floods reappeared and water began lapping at our feet and at the wheels of the vehicles. One tractor got stuck in the mud!
The weather won the first round as work was abandoned even before it started, but at least everyone knows what to do now. We were promised that work would commence as soon as the weather allowed.
Things had improved a little by the end of the first week of the month, enough to arrange a day for Jude and I to meet our friend Pete to get some site tasks done in the communal gardens. We planted trees that had been donated by members in the new coppice we are developing, plus two others in the Autumn Garden. These were purchased with the prize money we had received when we won an award as the Best Community Garden in Shropshire by the National Garden Scheme.
As Pete looks after the Autumn Garden he chose the trees. Two great specimens arrived in the back of his car, an Acer rubra and a Gleditsia Sungold. In the photo above Pete is planting the Gleditsia and below is the Acer with its red stems. We can now look forward to the golden foliage of the Gleditsia and the red petioles of the Acer which contrast so well with the yellow autumn leaf colour.
We also transplanted some wild flowers and wildlife friendly plants kindly donated by a member, Dee. They were on her plot and we transplanted them to the meadows and orchards. Wild Hypericum, Red and White Campion, Mallows, Plantain, Foxgloves and Teasles plus a selection of Verbascum. In the picture below Jude is busily planting verbascum in the orchard meadows. The insect homes look so much bigger when plants die down for the winter. We just hope they are full of our friends, the overwintering pest controllers.
In the first few days of December I completed constructing the Tawny Owl nesting box which I had started weeks ago. It is by far the biggest nest box I have ever attempted to make. Each year I ask members to donate their spare wood for nest box construction and plenty came in this year so I hope to make several boxes. My next challenge is to make a box for House Sparrows.
On our own plot we have dug over the plot and given it a deep duvet mulch of manure. Now we will let the worms and other little critters get to work on it. We have pruned our fruit bushes and brambles, and are mid-point through cutting down and digging up a blackberry which refuses to produce any fruit. We gave it our “three chance and out” treatment which we allow every failing plant in our gardens.
At the mid-point of December the weather turned cold with clear ” blue-skied” days and deep frosty nights. The workers came back to get started on the flood prevention work. They are getting on well. We met them early one morning to sort things out and I took advantage of the bright conditions to get some photos taken. Having just my Samsung Galaxy with me the rest of the pics in this post are taken with its camera – a great camera for a phone.
Spiders appeared to have been industrious all through the hours of darkness creating works of art for Jack Frost to add the finishing touches. In the first pic we can admire how they have decorated a shed’s gable end and the second and third show where they have added a feature to the Communal Hut.
It looks as though the spider population of the lotties have taken to using the picnic benches when it is too cold on the rear end for us gardeners to enjoy our coffee breaks on them.
On Wendy’s plot Jack Frost had iced the rose hips.
We have had some beautiful new trees delivered to the site ready for planting when the soil is not frozen. At the moment we would not get a spade in. We have been given a Weeping Silver Lime which we selected to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee Year, plus two crab apples Malus “Evereste” and Malus “Golden Hornet” to plant, one in each orchard to improve fruit pollination, and two ornamental Hawthorns.
The individual plots are looking bare and forgotten. Some have been well dug for the winter, others await better weather. Where water sits in puddles it had frozen solid. On one plot a double digging session had been interrupted by the weather.
On one plot next to the new coppice area the seed heads of Angelica, left for the Goldfinches and Bullfinches to feast upon, were covered in frost.
In the coppice area itself, our newly planted Hollies had attracted spiders.
The communal gardens looked monochrome with frost covering the herbage.
As befits the season, our Winter Garden is looking good! Pete was with me as I took these photos and he and I created this garden less than two years ago, so we keep admiring our handy work.
Splashes of colour sprang up to shine out in the gloom of the misty grey day, the fruit of the Malus “Evereste”, and the fire-coloured leaves of a Hawthorn in the hedge and a Raspberry on a plot.
As we wandered taking these pictures we were followed around by the resident Robins who were waiting for us to start work turning soil over and exposing bugs for them to pounce upon. But no gardening was done, the soil being too solid with frost so no sod could be turned. We found time to top up the bird feeders in our feeding stations. These are busy with tits, finches, Nuthatches and Woodpeckers.
A winter wander around our local woodland patch within the grounds of the National Trust’s Attingham Park got off to a strange start. Expecting the cold weather to have restricted visitors to a few hardy souls, we arrived to see the main car park full, all overflow parking fields full and lots of extra parking also filling up rapidly.
We had arrived just after the start of their first Christmas related event – The Frost Fair. Bad planning! However the woodlands were quiet, the only sounds following us around were the songs of small and squeaky birds, Coal Tits, Treecreepers and Goldcrests.
The event we searched out was the art exhibition of the works of Mother Nature. She was her usual brilliant imaginative self.
Her woodcarving looked freshly made and full of texture and colour.
This piece looks to be based on the shapes of a crab’s claw.
Drawings on the cut trunks of a diseased Ash tree reminded me of cave paintings.
This triangular land art installation shows Mother Nature working in a more geometric way.
As the woodland path took us deeper in amongst the trees we appreciated the quietness of our footfalls, the quietness of the soft deep pine needle duvet. When it is quiet the subtleties of bird songs and calls are more easily enjoyed. We stood feet away from a Goldcrest feeding on insects he had searched out from the conifer needles with thin probing beak. He suddenly fell to the floor as if dead, or mimicking the gentleness of a falling leaf. He dropped into the fern and bramble undergrowth and stayed there out of sight. Was he feigning death to fool a predator or pretending to be a falling leaf with the same purpose in mind? As we stood silently in awe of what we had witnessed he reappeared vertically up into the branch he had fallen out of. One of those magical moments that two observers of the natural world will never forget! Any idea what he may have been up to?
Nature playing with light fascinated us as the sun dropped lower in the thin blue sky lighting up the understory with golds and oranges.
Water, be it a stream, ditch, river or pool, affords nature the chance of playing with mirrors to create illusions and mysteries.
On the land shadows are drawn long and dark. The long tall tree shadow stretches out across the pastureland. My own shadow tried to get in the picture until I managed to persuade it to move into the shadow of one of the tree trunks.
The shadow of the precariously leaning seat crossed our path as we approached the gap in the tall wall that would take us into the productive gardens.
The climbing, curling tendrils of this vine glow pink and red in the sunlight, forming a natural frame for the filigree skeletons of trees.
We greatly enjoyed our visit to the open air gallery.
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.
For our second post about the Savill Gardens we shall discover the colours, shapes and textures of the Winter Garden. Although planted with winter interest in mind when we explored in the autumn it was full of interest.
The third and final visit to the Savill Gardens will feature a selection of images from around the gentle walk we took through these stunning gardens. We had looked forward to visiting these gardens for years and when we finally did we were not disappointed in any way.
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.
We visited the Vynes on a wet October day not knowing that the walled garden there was run by the gardening charity, “Thrive”. If you ask someone to name a garden charity the most likely answer would be the RHS, the NGS or perhaps Garden Organic but few will mention Thrive. This is sad as they do such good work. On their website when describing their role they state, ” We champion the benefits of gardening, carry out research, and offer training and practical solutions so that anyone with a disability can take part in, benefit from and enjoy gardening.”
“Thrive” is such an apt name for a charity which helps people thrive in the garden and through gardening. Sadly as the weather was so wet we met no gardeners at work. Apart from us and the occasional Robin, who provided the entertainment, the place was deserted.
The charity looks after gardens all over the UK teaching the skills of gardening and developing a love of gardening in its clients. Their gardens though are there to educate others. The gardening standards are very high and the gardens boast some effective educational and informative displays.
Here at the National Trust property, The Vynes, the productive garden maintained by Thrive illustrates quality techniques in action especially composting.
We liked these two ideas for raised beds, particularly this turf bank version, which would make gardening easier for wheelchair users or back pain sufferers (like me). The second picture shows raised beds and recycling combined – revamped old tyres.
Arches constructed from tree prunings make most attractive and natural supports for climbers such as Sweet Peas and help entice you down the paths.
Organic ideals are followed here as well, such as using fleece as protection from pests and the cold and growing green manures such as this Phacelia.
We were impressed by the use of willow as a craft material in creations such as the giant hen and the wall-mounted butterfly.
There was even a children’s garden with picnic tables topped with puzzles and a beautifully decorated shed full of special tools and games.
The produce from the beds are for sale to visitors and at this time of year that meant mostly apples in variety.
To find out more about the work of Thrive I suggest a visit to their website www.thrive.co.uk . To see their work in action you can visit one of their many gardens around the country. Check it out and you will be impressed!
A Vegetarian | Nature Lifestyle Blog
.....and nurturing my soul
Journeys In St. Louis Gardening and Beyond
Consult the genius of the place
A blog full of humorous and poignant observations.
Notes from a wildlife-friendly cottage garden
...an emerging social science
'The most important and informative publication on wildlife of our times' - The Independent. This blog is a member of The UK & Ireland Natural History Bloggers group: www.uknhb.blogspot.com
Inspire - Cultivate - Grow Native Plants - Restore Landscapes
To create and protect a semi-natural wild space for the people of Farnham to enjoy and experience an array of British wildlife in our town
The www.gardeningwithchildren.co.uk Blog
birding through the seasons, why birds matter and how to conserve them
with a camera in hand
Transform your outdoor space
My allotment, cooking and other interests
my gardening life through the year
Trying to live a creative life
trying to live as lightly as possible on our beautiful planet
Nature lovers from Leicester living the good life.
Finding the beautiful in the everyday
Michelle's Allotment
thoughts from and about my garden
Big plans for a small garden
A Walled Country Garden in South East Scotland
Life at the fruity chicken
Off grid living. Self sufficient. "PERMAGANICS RULE".
Nottingham's Grade 2* Listed Allotments and Community Orchard
a journey in suburban vegetable gardening
The madness of growing your own
A novel approach to vegetable gardening
Sustainable living in the Irish countryside.
Master Gardener, amateur photographer, quilter, NH native, and sometimes SC snowbird
Recent work and work in progress and anything else that interests me
a chaotic cottage gardener
a weekly blog that creates a personal philosophy through photographs and words
Stories from a sassy and classy Southern farmbelle.
Simple Organic Gardening & Seasonal Living
turning dirt into dinner
today the world is created anew
Notes from a Devon garden
Life Through The Lens
A photography blog showcasing the best photography pictures and videos on the internet
Just another WordPress.com site
personal observations from the natural world as the search continues for a new approach to conservation.
The Wonders of Life through my Eyes, my Heart, my Soul
greenbenchramblings 