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--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--September 2022

 

Cooler weather has arrived now, which means get out the jumpers and scarves and wrap up warm when we're outside. We've also had rain--that's been very welcome. 

The garden is starting to look autumnal as leaves change colour. The Rowan is now full of yellow berries and the Crab apple tree is full of pink fruit which will turn darker over the next few weeks. We get a lot of big birds in the garden, crows, magpies, pigeons are regular visitors.  They come from the big trees which are just further down from the garden. The smaller birds seem to be happier in the front garden. But on a few mornings recently I have been so pleased to see lots of blue tits and long tailed tits flitting about the back garden, going from the Rowan to the Crab apple and the twisted Willow. It's been a lovely sight, perhaps the bigger birds are not such early risers.

In the flower borders many flowers have started to go over, but there is still lots of colour from the Rudbekias, Rogersia, Japanese Anemone, Cosmos and Sedum--all lovely Autumn colours.

The Sedum last for ages and the seedheads still look good when the flowers have gone over. These have flopped over, I should have put a plant support to help them stand up.

The Cosmos haven't been good this year, but there's still a bright flash of colour in this little corner.

Hydrangea 'limelight' is a good one for late summer and autumn. It really lives up to its name. There have been more flowerheads this year and I have been able to cut some for the house. It looks good with the yellow grass in front.

In the front garden the hydrangea by the door is heavy with blooms which are now turning a lovely dark pink.

Hostas have turned yellow, they will soon need to be cut back as the leaves will get very slimy.  They are very bright at the moment though. 

I've been struggling with arthritis pain recently, but fortunately there hasn't been much work to do in the garden. It's been a nice change to just potter around or sit and enjoy the changing colours. Richard has been cutting back some of the shrubs in the front garden which have got so big they were taking a lot of light away. This is a job which aggravates my arthritic hands so I just stood by and supervised!

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--September

 September was a lovely month in the garden.  The rudbekias and sedums have been flowering for weeks and are still looking great. The sedums are so loved by the bees and butterflies. The Michaelmas daisies are flowering now and a good contrast to the lovely golden hakonechloa next to them.

 

One of the splashes of colour which is showing no signs of fading are the pelargoniums in the borders up the side path of the house. Some of them have been in the ground for two winters now, it must be very sheltered there. I would normally pull them up late autumn. I think they might be in there for another winter. I wonder how they will do this time.

There is a lot of tidying up to be done in the garden now as the summer flowers come to an end. I spent a couple of days weeding and tidying up the front garden. It had got very untidy, the hostas were completely slug eaten so I cut them right back. Under the windows at the front of the house the borders have got very out of control, so I have started to dig everything out. I want to start again with completely new borders but I'm not sure what to do with them so I have decided that once I have cleared the ground of all the unwanted plants I will leave it all unplanted over the winter while I think about it and work out a plan.

This month I have again joined Sarah at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' slot.

Into September

Where did August go and July for that matter? The summer holidays have gone by so quickly. I was looking forward to leisurely days, pottering about in the garden, catching up with a few jobs and not watching the clock for school pick ups. Well I didn't have to watch the clock, and my days were probably leisurely but not in the way I'd planned. We had some lovely days out with the grandchildren. We had family to stay and more days out with more grandchildren. We've done garden visits, been to the seaside, explored historic houses and walked a lot. It seems to have been a whirl of activity but lovely too.

So here we are in September. There's a quieter feel to the days now the grandchildren are back at school. And things are different with the eldest now at high school. There are a lot of changes to our routine.

September brings changes to the garden and the countryside as everything changes colour and berries appear. I feel I need to go out and pick blackberries even though there are some in the freezer from last year. And after last year discovering a secret place where we found sloe berries I want to return to pick more, make more sloe gin.

The garden has been very good at looking after itself these last few weeks, but I know there is much to be done. The allotment  is producing plenty, but our work on the two plots we have at the moment is of sorting stuff out and making more storage space as we prepare to give up one of them at the end of the year.
It's like moving house.

We are looking forward to some time away later this month, time to slow down, to rest, to walk, to enjoy new scenery.

 

September flowers

Since I started taking photographs of the garden throughout the year I've found it really useful to see how the borders change with the seasons. Early on in the year when there isn't much in flower, I can look back on last summer's pics and see how full they will get.  That helps to curb my desire to fill up all the spaces with more plants. It helps me to see how new borders have progressed since the previous year and it also helps me to identify plants. A green shoot which appears in the spring may not be a weed after all but a plant which lost it's label after planting last year.  I've destroyed many a new plant in my enthusiasm to tidy up a border of weeds.

This week I have been looking back at my photos of  last September in the garden to see how it compares to this year. They looked to be more colourful last year. But I have moved plants around this year, so that will have made a difference.

I wandered round the garden last weekend trying to spot the good bits in what I felt were rather dull looking borders. And I did spot some bright areas.  I noticed there were lots of butterflies and bees about. If there are bees and butterflies then there must be flowers.

I planted some dahlia plants earlier in the summer, but some of them got eaten by slugs so I bought a couple more last week to brighten the borders up with late summer colour. The ones with the open centres are more bee friendly than the cactus type

This year I planted some more plants in the yellow border.  This helenium is looking very bright now. I didn't realise how tall it grew though.

Some time ago I made a 'wish list' for garden plants and amongst them was helenium and echinacea purpurea. I bought three echinacea at a plant fair in the summer and was pleased to see they've settled in.

The sedums are starting to flower, the bees and butterflies love them.

 This clump of marguerites is still looking good, there are others around the garden which have not done so well.

Persicaria takes on some lovely autumn tints.

It is still only the middle of September so I'm hoping that over the next couple of weeks the garden will take on some more late summer colour.

What's looking good in your garden at the moment?