Through the Garden Gate --December 2024

December is always a busy month with preparations for Christmas and doing nice Christmassy things. It's never a gardening month for me.

At the beginning of December I made wreaths for the front and side entrances to the house.

Early in December we also had a trip to the garden centre to buy the Christmas tree. Getting it home in the car is always quite an event. 

We had a Christmas tree festival at our church and my friend and I decorated one. It wasn't just the tree to decorate though, it was the table top around it. So it took quite a bit of thinking about as we planned it. They all had to represent a Christmas carol and there was a quiz for visitors to guess the carols. Ours was 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing'. I think it would be quite an easy one to guess.

We visited our daughter Sarah down in Bedfordshire for a weekend and her church also had a Christmas tree festival. They seem to be quite popular events now in churches. 

Back home, the following week, our other daughter, Helen and I went to Lytham Hall. The hall is open to visitors throughout the year, but at Christmas it is decorated up with a Christmas theme. This year it had a Charles Dickens theme with each room representing a different Dickens book. It was beautifully decorated. A lot of the decorations were hand made by some of the volunteers.

The garden is looking quite bedraggled with soggy leaves on the beds, but it's nice to see bulbs starting to emerge. The first to flower will be the snowdrops. I was quite surprised as I walked around the garden yesterday to see the Hamamelis flowering and near the kitchen door there's a lovely sweet smell of the Christmas box which is just starting to produce its little white flowers. There are also cyclamen flowering under the trees. There's plenty of interest in the garden if I spend some time walking round and searching. Sometimes it's a bit too cold to go out though!

I received two garden books for Christmas, Carol Klein 's 'Hortobiography' and 'Drawn to the Garden' by Caroline Quentin. Carol Klein grew up only a few miles from where I grew up so it's interesting to read about her early years. 

I also received a long handled patio weeder. I do love a new garden tool. It should be easier on my back if I don't have to kneel down to weed the patio now. 

The weather has been really miserable recently, with grey skies, fog and drizzle and there's a weather warning for snow in the next few days. It's definitely not gardening weather. Fortunately there's not much to be done at this time of year. 

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and I wish you all a happy and peaceful New Year and happy gardening.

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

'Through the Garden Gate' post.

Through the Garden Gate--November 2024

We've had some bad weather this month and the garden has taken a bit of a battering. It was still looking very autumnal early on with the grasses showing off their lovely colours. 

I even managed to cut a few flowers for the house.

But then things changed and the weather turned colder bringing frosty mornings. Then the snow arrived which kept us indoors for a few days.

So gardening work has slowed down now. I occasionally cut a few plants back if they go mushy, but most of the tidying up can be left for a while. I planted tulip bulbs in pots and smaller bulbs in small pots for the garden table. 

Now I am getting ready for Christmas. This week I cut foliage for Christmas wreath making. The allotment is a good place for foliage. Conifer and berried ivy are plentiful. My daughter has a rosemary bush in her garden and was happy for me to cut from it. I have a pot of it by the kitchen door but  I have never been able to get it to grow very big, probably because I cut it a lot for cooking with. I will be making the wreaths next week. 

Next week we will also be going to the garden centre to buy our Christmas tree. We go early in December to buy it so we get the best choice, but don't bring it in the house until later.

Today I will be at church decorating a Christmas tree for our Christmas tree display. An event we started last Christmas and are repeating this year. It's a busy time of year and starting to get very Christmassy. 

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

'Through the Garden Gate' post.

Through the Garden Gate--October 2024

Throughout October we have so much enjoyed seeing the changes in the garden. We have seen the leaves change colour on the trees, not just in our garden but in neighbouring gardens. The rowan is a particularly good tree for autumn colour. The leaves go red and the berries are yellow. The birds have had a great time eating the berries. The garden is dying down but there is still interest amongst the borders.

Walking round I can see more than I can looking out the windows. The hardy fuchsia is very colourful it seems to be a bit later flowering this year, its red and purple  flowers brightening up a dark spot in the front garden.

The Liquidamber tree is the star of the back garden,  its leaves turning a beautiful dark red and orange.

The grasses provide some bright spots and structural interest. I should have been out with my camera more as some grasses and plants took on lovely bronze tints before they turned straw coloured. I missed taking the photos, but to name a few, there was a lovely Miscanthus grass which looked amazing with the morning sun on it, Rodgersia and Hostas too. Still hanging on with a few flowers are hardy geraniums, roses, Japanese anemones,white lysimachia.

It was my birthday last weekend and my daughter and I went to RHS Harlow Carr. It's only a few weeks since I last went and how it has changed since then with the most breathtaking colours. We had a walk through the arboretum, we love a woodland walk especially in the autumn. There were interesting seed pods, plenty of fungi and of course carpets of golden leaves. We went in the bird hide and were lucky enough to see a woodpecker on one of the feeders.

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

Through the Garden Gate--September 2024

September has seen the garden gradually slowing down. Plants are coming to an end, but before they die down completely they are taking on autumn tints. There are still late flowering perennials to keep the colour going for a while. The sedum is lovely, I have it in the front, side and back garden. The Michaelmas daisies are in flower now, the dahlias are struggling on--I'm not good at growing dahlias.

The hydrangea 'Limelight' is looking wonderful and lights up a dull area. I have been able to cut some of its blooms too.

The Gertrude Jekyll rose has been having a rest for a few weeks but is now flowering again.

Work in the garden has been about deadheading and tidying up. I have been sorting out and cleaning pots and seed trays, cleaning and tidying the shed and making up pots of autumn bedding plants.

I spent an energetic half hour or so digging up a clump of yellow irises . I'm planning on moving a few things round in the spring or over the winter. There are two clumps of blue irises which also need digging up, but I haven't had the energy to tackle those as well. The irises are at the back of a border which has  become over crowded by a shrub and other plants and the blue ones didn't flower well this year. So I am going to find another spot in the garden for them where they should get more sun and  hopefully they will perform better next year.

We had a late summer visit to RHS Harlow Carr early in September. We hadn't been all year and there were lots of changes to the gardens. The late summer flowers in shades of deep pink, yellows and oranges were lovely.

I loved this grass, I think it is called 'bunny tails'

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

Through the Garden Gate -- August 2024

The garden has needed very little work doing to it this month. I have pottered around deadheading, cutting a few plants back and cutting flowers for the house. Now at the end of the summer it could probably do with a good tidy up, but I'm reluctant to cut back too much yet. There are some mare's tail weeds growing at the back of the borders just where it's difficult to get at them without trampling over plants, so I'm trying to ignore them and I will tackle them later in the autumn.

We still haven't had any real summer weather, but are hoping for something better in the autumn. 

As the summer flowers go over the late flowering ones are the hydrangea 'Limelight' which is full of big flower heads and the Japanese anemones. 

In the back garden are a clump of pink ones and the shady part of the front garden is lit up with white ones. 

At the beginning of August we went on holiday to Wales to a lovely part of south Snowdonia. We stayed in a cottage on a farm with a river running by and mountain views all around us. The scenery was beautiful.

We always like to visit a garden when on holiday and the nearest was Plas Brondanw near Porthmadog. The gardens were created by Clough Williams -Ellis who built Portmerion. which we have visited a few times in the past. I had never heard of Plas Brondanw before but was keen to visit. 

The views of the Welsh mountains were all around the gardens providing a borrowed landscape. The gardens are a bit Italian in style with a lot of structure from stone walls, paths, buildings and statues and are divided into rooms. 

We enjoyed looking round the gardens so much we went round twice! Although we had never heard of Plas Brondanw before it is obviously well known as Gardener's World did a feature on it recently. It was nice to see it again on TV when we returned from holiday.

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