Through the Garden Gate December 2023

What a stormy month December has been! The garden is looking very battered by all the wind and rain with debris scattered about all over the place. It needs a good tidy up but I can't see that happening for a while yet.  

Not much gardening gets done in December, I do like to see this time of year as a time of rest from the garden. It's such a busy time getting ready for Christmas. At the beginning of December our church put on a Christmas tree display, with the different groups within the church decorating a tree to show the work they do. Our church isn't very big but we managed to fit eight trees around the building. Here are a couple of them.

The following weekend we went to visit our daughter Sarah in Bedfordshire and her church also had a Christmas tree festival. This church was bigger than ours and there was plenty to look at. 

Most of my December garden work has been foraging for evergreen foliage and making up Christmas wreaths for the front and side doors to the house as well as arrangements for indoors.

 I potted up the three white hellebores which I bought from RHS  Harlow Carr last month and put one on the garden patio table, one at the side door and the other at the front door.  These will keep going for quite a while through the winter.

Now as we move into the new year I'm starting to think about what changes I might make to the garden. There are some plants which have taken over and  need moving to make more space. There's always something new you can do in the garden. 

Looking round the garden this week I have noticed snowdrops coming through and cyclamen are already flowering in the woodland beds. There is a lot to look forward to. 

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and I wish you much good health and happiness in 2024.

I am linking this blog post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea ' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate ' post.

Through the Garden Gate--November 2023

November seems to have flown by so much that I nearly forgot about my end of month blog. We've had a lot of rain and not many good days to get out and do any gardening. As it was so wet and I couldn't get out I took a photo of the garden viewed from the house. It is still colourful so I haven't done any cutting back, even the seed heads look good. 

Early in the month I managed to get some tidying done, paths swept and cleared of moss and weeds. I bought tulip bulbs and planted them in pots. I went for orange and purple colours this time, I'm hoping they go well together. This week I started cutting foliage in preparation for making Christmas wreaths. I'll be making two, one for the front of the house and the other for the side door, any foliage left will be used in the house in vases. 

This week we visited RHS Harlow Carr. It was a beautiful day but very cold. It takes us just over an hour to get there and because of the shorter days now we didn't have a lot of time to walk around and fit lunch in as well. But it was still a lovely change to get out in the sunshine. The colours are still good especially the stems of the dogwoods which look great next to the white bark of the birch trees. 

They were getting the garden ready for Christmas, can you see the big baubles in the tree below?

We like to walk along the streamside, there is a lot of  improvement work being done which we hope will be finished next time we go.

I liked the pink seed heads on these grasses.

I managed to spend some of my birthday gardening vouchers in the shop before we left. I bought three white hellebores which are flowering now and I will plant them in pots for Christmas displays. 

I am linking this blog post to Sarah's blog at 'Down By the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post

Through the Garden Gate--October 2023

October is one of my favourite months, not just because it's my birthday month but I just love Autumn and the changes to the garden and countryside. Last weekend we went to visit our daughter who lives in Bedfordshire. It was my birthday weekend and we hadn't seen them for ages. I got garden vouchers from them, so I can look forward to a day out soon to somewhere garden related to spend them, probably RHS Harlow Carr. We had a shopping trip to Hitchin where more things were bought and we had a lovely lunch. 

Back home on Sunday I was struck by how the garden seemed to have changed in just a few days. Autumn had definitely arrived.  Leaves had fallen and there seemed to be much more autumn colour. Where we live there are grass verges outside the houses with trees, mostly flowering cherry type which go a lovely colour at this time of year.

In the garden the grasses are now taking over from flowers. This one is Hakonechloa. It's not a tall grass, so it's good for the front of the border, under trees or by a path. It forms a clump and has lovely arching leaves. It changes colour from yellow to a lovely russet colour in the autumn and then through the winter it goes more straw like. 

This one is a Miscanthus but I've lost the label so I don't know its full name. It's beautiful at this time of year. It grows lovely dark pink flower heads which later go fluffy as they open up. I picked some recently to go in a flower arrangement and they lasted well without dropping bits.

The Fatsia  produces really unusual flowers at this time of year.

I let the hostas show their autumn colours before I cut them back for the winter.

The Liquidamber tree starts to change colour in late summer.  It gives us plenty of interest as the leaves change and they are always late to fall.

Early on in October I potted up loads of Hyacinth bulbs for forcing. Hopefully some will be ready by Christmas. Our local garden centre has been full of cyclamens in beautiful shades of pink. I can never resist buying some for autumn container arrangements.

I am linking this blogpost to Sarah's blog at 'Down By the Sea' for her monthly 

'Through the Garden Gate' post

Through the Garden Gate--September 2023

September is a month of changes as schoolchildren go back after a long summer holiday. In our family the grandchildren are growing up and becoming more independent. The eldest grandchild started her second year at Leeds university, another began his first year at Lincoln. Then one is doing A levels this time and the youngest doing her GCSEs. There are changes going on in the garden too as Autumn has now arrived. It's a season that I love and I have been watching the changes to the garden daily. At the beginning of the month summer returned briefly with a really hot spell of weather, but since then there has been some very rainy, windy weather. Leaves are blowing about on the lawn keeping Holly the cat amused and giving her plenty to play with.

The Michaelmas daisies started flowering, giving a lovely splash of colour next to the Rudbekias and Gaura in the raised bed border. The sedums give interest throughout the year, but at this time when they are in flower I love the deep pink flat flower heads. 

Other flowers are still struggling on giving little spots of colour here and there, but now it's the turn of the foliage from shrubs and trees. The Rowan is starting to change colour, it's clusters of yellow berries seem to sparkle. Last year the crab apple tree produced masses of fruit but this year we have to search for the odd cluster. I don't know why that is.

 The raised bed border has become a bit overgrown in the last couple of years and I've kept meaning to sort it out, but not known quite what to do with it. The bed looks good in late spring, then gets overgrown and lacks colour later on in the summer. After much thought I worked  out that I need to dig some plants up to plant elsewhere in the garden and space others out more. Then next year I will get some new late summer flowering  perennials to plant. So on a fine day when I was feeling full of energy I climbed into it and dug up a Solidago (Golden Rod) plant which had got quite big for it's space and I had never really liked it there. I split it up and have found a couple of spaces in the front garden where I can replant it. The bed still looks a bit of a mess but at least I now have a plan of what to do with it. I also need some better weather so I can carry on with the work.

In the front garden, the Hydrangea flowers are  changing colour to shades of deep pink and almost purple on some of them. I am going to dry some of them as they are useful for winter flower arrangements.

At the beginning of September we had a few days away in Northumberland, visiting Holy Island, Bamburgh and Alnwick Gardens.  We've been to Northumberland before but never to the Alnwick Gardens so I was quite looking forward to seeing them. There are some spectacular water features, the main one greets you as you enter the garden, with water cascading down a massive structure of steps and plumes of water spurting up every half hour to give an amazing display. 

We had probably visited at the wrong time of year to see the ornamental garden at its best but it was still quite colourful in places. 

One garden area which we enjoyed, although quite a number of the plants had gone over, was the Poison Garden. Normally you can't enter this garden without a guide but we were allowed in and told not to touch or eat any plants. There were guides there who would tell you about the plants. It was interesting to identify quite a number of plants which we wouldn't have thought were dangerous, but were told how they could affect you if used in the wrong way. 

I'm hoping we will get to visit one or two more gardens before the end of the year, most likely RHS Harlow Carr as we love to see it in Autumn and also RHS Bridgewater.

I am linking this blog post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post

Through the Garden Gate--August 2023

On Gardener's World last week Monty Don described his garden as 'chaos'. That's a good description of my garden at the moment. It's that time of year when many plants are now going over, others getting big and flopping over. 

If I go out to do some gardening I'm never sure where to start. Putting in plant supports earlier in the year is something I never get right, I forget which ones need the support and I often don't have enough of the right sized supports. As I've been working in the garden trying to tidy up I've been trying to decide which plants to cut back and which to leave over the winter for the wildlife.

The highlight of the garden over the last few weeks has been and still is the Hydrangea 'Limelight' with it's lovely creamy white conical flower heads. It's about four or five years since I planted it and each year more flowers have appeared. This year I've been able to cut some of them for the house without spoiling the display. 

Down in the shed border there's a tangled mess of white lysimachia and pink Japanese anemones. It does look to be out of control but I like it. The Hosta bed in the front garden is quite a dark area which doesn't get much sun and a couple of years ago I planted three white Japanese anemones to brighten it up.  These started flowering a couple of weeks ago and are looking good.

I always sow some annual flower seeds for the  allotment cutting bed and usually have enough left to fill a few gaps in the garden. I grew Lavatera for the first time this year and am quite pleased with how well they've done. They seem to be trying to climb up the arch with the Getrude Jekyll rose. They are almost the same colour too.

Now at the end of the month the weather seems to be improving a little. I'm hoping we might get a nice warm spell in September and perhaps the garden will perk up a bit.

I am linking this blog post to Sarah's blog at 'Down By the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post.

Rainy days and harvesting crops

 I've been picking blackberries recently from the lane outside our allotment gate. It looked like I was the first to get to them. Usually I'm late picking them and often miss out. But the lane has got very overgrown this year so I don't think many people are walking that way along the path.

We are unfortunate that our neighbours on either side of our plot as well as another next but one have not been maintaining their plots, so access to their end of the lane is full of nettles and brambles. This is where the fruit is.  I'm hoping we will get some new neighbours soon who will look after their plots as the council do an inspection at this time of year. It would be nice to have some neighbours who we can chat with and who will keep their plots looking reasonably tidy. Whoever takes them on will have a difficult job on as they have been allowed to get into a really bad state.

Picking blackberries always makes me think of autumn. It's the time of year coming up to late summer when we start to harvest a lot of our allotment crops and down on our plot we are getting some good harvests. Our jobs when we go to the plot are more about watering the greenhouse tomatoes and cucumbers and picking fruit, vegetables and flowers. If we have any time to spare after that we try to catch up on weeding.

With all the rain we have had recently not much work has been done and we have been dodging the showers. But on better days we've been able to get back to doing important jobs. I have cut down the pea and broad bean plants and weeded the bed. I also pulled up all the onions and put them to dry out in the cold frames. There were an awful lot of weeds in that bed which also has leeks in it. So I spent some time last week weeding them all out.

When I planted up the brassica bed months ago, I noticed that there were some nasturtiums which had self seeded from last year, so I left them there thinking that they would make good companion plants for the cabbages. Unfortunately they seem to have become a bit over friendly and run riot, taking over the bed so much I could barely see the cabbages. So the nasturtiums had to come out. It seemed such a shame to get rid of them as they were so colourful, but I managed to cut a lot of the flowers off to take home. I know the nasturtiums will be back next year as they drop a lot of seeds. Once they were out of the way I could see that I had a few cabbages, some Cavalo Nero kale  and purple sprouting broccoli.  

In the other cabbage patch next to them the cabbages and kale I planted early in the year are doing really well and there were no nasturtiums in that bed.

We've had a lot of courgettes, but I did plant rather too many, so it's been courgettes with everything for our meals. Thankfully they are are now coming to an end and I'm just picking little ones which are quite nice. Now the climbing beans are starting to appear and I know there will be a lot, there always are. In the greenhouses the tomatoes and cucumbers are producing good crops. I have made tomato chutney and soup and we have had lots of salads with chunks of cucumbers. I have given lots of my surplus crops away to friends and neighbours who seemed very happy to receive them.

The blackberries have gone in the freezer and will be used to make apple and blackberry jam and maybe a crumble. My daughter has a Bramley apple tree in her garden and lets me me help myself to the apples. So the rain doesn't seem to have affected any of the vegetables we've grown, but I do wish we could have some better weather.