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 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.

End of the year on the allotment

December is the month when there are very few visits to the allotment. We go to pick  a cabbage or some leeks if they are ready and to cut some greenery for my Christmas door wreaths.

Everything is quieter and the pace is slower. There is no rush to get seeds sown and plants in the ground or weeding done. The leaves are now all fallen from the sycamore tree, we have swept them up and put them in the leaf bin. There is a lot of mud and water about because of the heavy rains, so not a good idea to work on the soil. On our few visits to the allotment we always feel it looks really sad, dark and gloomy.

 We have been so busy at home during the last 6 months, making a new garden, doing work on the house so our visits to the allotment haven't been as frequent as usual. It's not looking too bad though. On the last few visits we cleared away all the veg which was finished, weeded and spread a layer of manure on the surface and  planted the garlic. There is still some tidying up and weeding to be done, more compost or manure to put on the beds, the shed and little greenhouse both need cleaning out but I feel we have got most of the important things done for the time being.

I love this time of year on the allotment.  I love the clearing up process and putting the beds to rest for the winter.  There's a sense of slowing down and resting, but at the same time looking ahead to next year and planning. I have a few plans in my head and over the winter I will set them down on paper. I will be thinking about what to grow next year and any jobs which need doing. Mistakes may have been made, but I will try again or do something different.

The seasons come and go and now it's the season to slow down. The allotment will come back to life and will soon look fresh and green again.

Wishing all my followers a peaceful and happy New Year. If you are a gardener I wish you also a productive and bug free New Year.

December on the allotment

Plot 8

Work on our allotments  slowed down considerably during December.  Our visits there were only to feed Ziggy the allotment cat, to pick produce and to cut greenery for my Christmas wreaths and flower arrangements.  December is such a busy month at home with all the preparations for Christmas that the allotment has to take a back seat. A few days before Christmas we went down to see what vegetables we could pick. The brussels sprouts haven't done very well and a lot of them have blown. I decided they weren't good enough for the Christmas day dinner table. Maybe another day. But I pulled beetroot, parsnips, leeks, swede and collected some onions from their storage racks in the shed.

plot 10b

We've had frosts this month which have finally finished off the flowers in the cut flower beds.  The autumn raspberries have gone over and are now ready for cutting back.  There are still beds which need to be cleared and topped with manure, the rhubarb and fruit bushes need manuring too.  There's plenty to do and I can't wait to start work again as soon as the weather is a bit milder.

Thank you for reading my blog. Wishing you all a very Happy New Year and lots of good gardening.

Reflecting on December

I normally do an end of month reflection on the garden.  But really December in the garden hasn't been much different to November.  So I'm thinking here about what I've seen done and enjoyed generally in December.

In the garden a few more plants went brown and flopped, more leaves fell and covered everywhere and some flowers gave up trying to stay in bloom.  The weather  and  preparations for Christmas prevented me from going out doing much in the garden. I  swept up leaves from the paths and will probably continue to clear the borders of leaves during the winter months.  There is some colour around.  The yellow climbing rose at the front of the house which I normally cut back in the autumn to stop it being blown about by the wind is still flowering.  There are bright spots of orange from the calendula which I neglected to cut back, some lovely foliage colour from the grasses and hardy geraniums and  the winter jasmine is now in flower.

The house has been full of activity.  It's been a time for working through jobs lists, for shopping, for baking lovely food, making Christmas decorations and remembering people you only think about once a year when you send and receive Christmas cards.  There have been lovely times with family, carol concerts and nativities with the grandchildren who live nearby and visits from the ones who live far away, tinged with sadness because we don't see them often enough.  The house has been and still is full of colour, sparkle and twinkling lights.  In a few days times all that will be gone and we will move on and make plans for the new year.

Hoping you all enjoyed Christmas and wishing you a peaceful and happy 2012.