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.

Through the Garden Gate--December 2022

Not much work gets done in the garden during December, Christmas preparations take over my time, although some of them are garden related. I've spent a lot of time looking out of the windows thinking about what needs doing, admiring areas which look good and watching the birds feasting on the crab apples and anything else they can find.

At the beginning of the month I cut greenery from the allotment and the garden to make Christmas wreaths and flower arrangements. I managed to get conifer and berried ivy from the allotment, box and rosemary from my daughter's garden and Pittosporum, Brachyglottis and dried hydrangea heads from my own garden.  I had a few busy days making the wreaths--one for the front of the house and the other for the side. We bought the Christmas tree from our local garden centre and this provided me with a bit more greenery.

A couple of weeks into December we woke up one morning to see snow had fallen overnight. It was the weekend our daughter Sarah and family came up for a pre Christmas visit. Cars were sliding about, wheels spinning, so we decided to cancel our plans to go out and about that weekend and stayed indoors in the warm. We had a lovely weekend with our family together and I made a big Christmas meal. It took a week for the snow to go from the paths and garden and was very slippy out.

Now at the end of the month we are getting a lot of rainy, windy weather and the garden is looking quite bedraggled. I'm looking forward to some better weather so I can get out and do some work again. In the meantime, I received some lovely garden books for Christmas so I am doing quite a bit of reading.

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and I wish you a happy and healthy New year.

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

Making Christmas wreaths

 Gardening work usually stops in December to make way for all the Christmas activities. The garden itself seems to be happy having that rest.  We have had so much rain recently that the garden is absolutely sodden and it would be impossible to do any work even if I wanted to.

Last week was all about making Christmas wreaths, buying the tree and getting it into the house. I love making wreaths, it has become one of my Christmas traditions. I suppose it is garden work of a sort because it involves collecting natural foliage and it gets me outside even if the weather is not good. I cut some foliage from the allotment(conifer). I also cut ivy from my daughter's garden.  She is very happy for me to cut away at it as there is rather a lot.  Its the big dark leaved ivy with the lovely berries--ideal for Christmas flower arrangements and wreaths.  My garden was only planted up as a new garden two and a half years ago, so I am limited with what I can cut. I gather the grey leaved Senecio or Brachyglottis. I also use cuttings from Christmas trees which my local garden centre lets me take from their trimmings.

In past years I always used an oasis wreath base, but this year I thought I would have a change and use a different way to make the wreath. I used a wire wreath ring base which I packed with moss and secured with florists wire.  Then I attached sprigs of foliage around the moss with more wire.

I was quite pleased with the result. I always do two wreaths--one for the front door and one for the side door--which is where most people enter our house.  This year I did an extra one which I laid flat on the garden table with a pot of white Hellebores in the middle.

The Christmas tree was bought in early December and kept outside until we were ready to bring it indoors. After much upheaval of moving furniture round the tree was finally in place and the cat immediately took up residence underneath it in the far corner where we couldn't get at her.  But I know how to get her out from there--just switch on the vacuum cleaner and she's out in a flash!

Through the garden gate in December

I prepared this blog a couple of weeks ago and with all the busyness of Christmas, didn't get around to finishing it. So as it's about things I have been doing in the garden in December I decided to publish it as this month's 'Through the Garden Gate' post, joining with Sarah at Down by the Sea.

There's not been much gardening done in December except to sweep up leaves and cut back the odd plant which has got messy. But I've had lots of fun doing other things.

Christmas is a busy time,  I love all the sparkle and glitter, it just seems to brighten up this dark time of year, not just in the house but also in the garden.

I've always enjoyed making my own evergreen door wreaths at Christmas. I put one on the front and one on the back door. But in the last two or three years I have felt inspired to decorate the garden too. I have loads of foliage available in the garden and at the allotment. There are seedheads, moss, twigs, berries and many other things freely available.  So I have been making use of them.

I got a few ideas from our December visits to RHS Harlow Carr who decorate the greenhouse and summer house with rustic stuff, but who also add quirky things like hanging big baubles from trees and twiggy stars from the pergola.

So this year I have made twiggy wreaths wrapped in moss and  berries and hung them on the garden gates and the shed. I have also arranged pots of seasonal colour on the garden table and potting benches.  I made stars and hearts out of twigs to hang from the apple tree and other places.  And I have hung big red baubles  from the apple tree too.

I am expecting that the berries will all be eaten by the birds, but that doesn't matter they can have a feast for Christmas. Storm Barbara arrived here in the north yesterday and this morning I spotted a bright red shiny bauble on the lawn which had been blown off one of the stars in the apple tree. I'm hoping for some calmer weather soon.

Thank you to all who follow and comment on my blog I wish you all  a happy and peaceful Christmas.

Christmas shopping event

We've been really tired this week following last weekend down at our daughter's helping with her fund raising event. Packing up the car with all the stuff was quite a challenge especially as we were travelling a fair distance. Making sure nothing got squashed was important as well as finding room for everything in our little car. Our suitcase was somewhere underneath all the boxes as was the spare wheel. My husband was hoping we didn't get a puncture on the journey down!

But we had a great time and the whole event raised  a good amount for cubs funds. I enjoyed running my Christmas decorations stall and meeting so many people. It was good to chat to people even if they didn't want to buy.  We didn't sell up, I didn't expect to so we brought  some things back with us which we can either make use of ourselves or pass on to some local charity events and I managed to sell another fresh foliage door decoration once we got home. Now I need to find the time to make my own door wreaths.

Being so tired we haven't felt up to doing any allotment work, but as the work is slowing down now I'm not too worried. It's all about clearing and manuring beds at the moment and we can do that a bit at a time.

We've had frost this week so I'm glad that I remembered to close the lids on the cold frame where I have put some tender plants.

One of the wreaths I made

Glitter time

It's that time of year. The glitter is out and all over the place and it will probably be around for the next six months or so. On carpets, clothes, the cat, even the garden. For the last few weeks I have been making Christmas crafts for a fund raising event my daughter is organising--Christmas tree decorations, pomanders, rose hip hearts, pot pourri. It all involved plenty of glitter and smelly spices. The grandchildren complained about the smell but I like it.  This week I have been making fresh foliage arrangements--wreaths and table decorations.  I have raided the garden and the allotment for conifer, ivy, holly and anything else which looks good at this time of year and will keep for a few weeks.

It started off as just a small idea but grew as I got carried away with it all and did lots more than I intended.  I'm exhausted now, but it's all done and soon we will be attempting to pack all the stuff in the back of our little car and drive down to Bedfordshire. So if you are in the Stotfold area on Saturday 29th November, 12noon--4pm, call in at the Scout Hut on Baldock Road and enjoy a Christmas shopping day. You get a mince pie and a glass of mulled wine with your ticket. It should be a great day. If you see me say hello.

Plans and things

 At this time of year I start to ease up on the gardening and allotment work, move indoors and get busy preparing for Christmas. That means lots of cleaning, cooking, baking and shopping.  For the last two weeks we have been decorating our breakfast room--a job which is taking a lot longer to complete than we anticipated.  But with a house as old as ours you never know what will happen when you start peeling wallpaper off the walls.  And what happened was that a lot of plaster came away with it, so that meant lots of holes to fill.  But we are now nearly finished (I think, I hope).

I have been longing to get down to the allotments to do some work, because there is still much to be done before I can feel happy that all is cleared up and beds manured for the winter. And I really miss not being there.  When I pop down briefly to feed the cat or dig up some leeks I look around, making a mental note of what needs to be done. The place looks very lonely, damp and dreary--"I'll be back soon",  I promise.

Back at home I have made the Christmas cake; I have blackberry, raspberry and rhubarb gins and vodkas maturing in a dark place; in the shed there are pots of white hyacinths  waiting  to be brought out nearer to Christmas and all sorts of twigs and seed heads drying out for my wreaths and flower arrangements. I can't wait to get started on making some twiggy wreaths, I have lots of ideas bubbling away in my head.

This all sounds very organised, but it isn't. I do have plans, lots of them, whether they will happen is another matter.