The Lodge Nature Reserve, Sandy

Last weekend we visited our daughter and family who live in Bedfordshire. On the Saturday they took us to  the The Lodge Nature Reserve at Sandy which is run by the RSPB. It is not far from where they live and although they have been there before it was a first visit for us. There was a Christmas Fayre on too so plenty for us to look at.

It was a lovely mild November day and the sunshine enhanced the autumn colour of the trees.  I was aware of lots of space and trees as we drove through to the car park.  There seemed to be plenty of walks on offer and we took the track which led to the Christmas Fayre and the RSPB shop. We didn't see any birds, but then with two lively grandchildren maybe the birds were keeping out of our way. The children enjoyed doing the Christmas trail as we walked along which entailed spotting  pictures placed among the trees. They also enjoyed spotting toadstools.

Father Christmas was in his grotto at the Fayre, so we had to go to see him of course. There was a Salvation Army band playing carols which all added to the Christmas theme.

After we had looked around the Fayre we walked to the Lodge.  On the way we found a huge tree which was great for climbing. We also found a wasp's nest in the ground, fortunately it was sectioned off with a warning to keep away, but we could see the wasps flying around the hole.

The Lodge has lovely gardens which are organic and worked to provide homes and food for wildlife

I'm sure it's a lovely place to visit in the spring and summer when the borders are in flower, but there was still plenty of colour around.

The grandchildren were very interested in the Japanese orange tree.  It had quite small fruit which had a soft downy feel to it and a delicate smell which we thought was a bit like peaches. The label said it had a very bitter flavour.

We enjoyed our visit to The Lodge and we left feeling there was much more to see.  We'll probably go back at another time of year when we can see different things.

Planting wishes

Some time ago I published a blog post on my wish list for garden plants. Since then I am now the proud owner of  two of those plants. Both of them have been acquired in different ways from my daughter Sarah. One is a cutting from a honeysuckle which I bought her earlier this year. We had spotted the honeysuckle at her  local garden centre, it had large pale yellow flowers and smelt divine. A bit broke off when she was planting it, she potted it up and it rooted. I have planted it under the apple tree where it can climb, I hope it likes living there.

The other plant is a Hamamelis (witch hazel).  http://apps.rhs.org.uk/plantselector/plant?plantid=901  I have wanted one of these for some time for the winter colour. Whenever I've seen them in gardening magazines or  TV garden programmes I've thought I'd like one in my garden.  Every time I see them in the garden centre in the winter they seem to be shouting, 'Look at me! Please buy me!' But I always look at the price tag and think, 'No!'

For my birthday Sarah sent me gardening vouchers, so I decided to use them to buy a Hamamelis. I was a bit nervous buying a plant which cost so much money. I felt a responsibility to get it right. Well I've taken advice from the man at the garden centre and hopefully I have done all the right things. At the moment it is just bare, twiggy branches, but I can't wait to see those spidery yellow flowers appear in January.

 

Brightening up a dull day

Much as I love Autumn there are times when it gets you down a bit. There are days which just glow with sunshine and leaf colour. Days which make you just want to wrap up warm and go off for a walk or out into the garden to sweep up leaves or do whatever needs doing out there. Then there are the dark, damp, dreary days which can make you feel miserable and depressed.  That's what today was like.

I called in at the garden centre on my way back from a shopping trip in town, to get some bird seed. And there by the front entrance was a table full of outdoor cyclamen plants, in all colours, pink, white, purple and red.  I couldn't resist buying 3 red ones, I had an empty trough at home waiting to be planted up with something. I also bought 2 variegated erisymums which contrasted well with the red of the cyclamen flowers.

They look really colourful and I've put them by the front door.  I hope they will cheer other people up who come to my house, especially on dark, dreary days.

Harlow Carr again.....the grown ups view

Although our visit to Harlow Carr Gardens last week was mainly taken up with childrens' activities, I did manage to take some photos of the gardens in their autumn glory. 

There was some stunning colour in the trees. This one in particular was quite breathtaking.

The herbaceous borders at Harlow Carr are massive and in the summer months are a riot of colour.  I was interested to see how they were looking now that the summer flowering plants had gone over. I have to say that they were still amazing but in a different way.  The grasses had taken over from the flowers to provide interest.

I liked these which reminded me of sheaves of corn.

These look lighter and more swishy and graceful with a pinky purple haze.

The dead summer flowers were still there, now with their seed heads providing the colour and interest. In my garden at home I'm trying to leave plants with interesting seed heads through the  winter, but huge clumps of them creates a much better effect than I could ever achieve.

And finally I had to look at the kitchen garden.  Who could not be impressed by this purple kale?

Thanks for reading my blog feel free to comment.

Another sort of beauty

 

Gardening in October and November is always for me a clearing up exercise. Tidying up the borders of the debris of dead plants, weeding and cutting back. But in the last few years I've not done as much cutting back as I used to. At one time I used to blitz the garden in October, cut all the perennials to ground level and 'put the garden to bed' for the winter.  Now I leave some plants to die down in their own time and in doing that I have discovered some wonderful late autumn colours and lots of plants with interesting seed heads. I leave these seed heads for winter display. They can look wonderful when they are touched with a layer of frost or snow.

Seed heads also provide homes for hibernating insects which then provide food for the birds during the winter. I remember a couple of years ago when I found clusters of hibernating ladybirds in the deadheads of  stachys and achillea plants. I couldn't bear to cut those back. Last year I spotted insects in the hollow stems of the lupin plants. Too late, I'd cut them down, so I placed them on the flower bed for the birds to rummage through. Some plants just go to a soggy mess in the autumn, like Hostas.  I leave them until the foliage turns to a lovely yellow colour.  Soon after this they flop and go messy, this  is when I clear them away.

So my clearing up is done gradually throughout the winter. And  the winter garden, instead of looking flat and colourless now has a different sort of beauty.

 What do you do with your garden at this time of year, cut back or leave?

Woodland fun

It had been my birthday earlier in the week and I wanted a day out at RHS Harlow Carr gardens with lunch in the pub next door. The colour in the gardens is fabulous at this time of year and that's what I wanted to see. We took two of our grandchildren (aged 5 and 7) who were on half term holiday.

Harlow Carr always has some good school holiday activities for children, and for half term week it was all about Halloween.  There was a scary monsters trail to follow so we picked up the trail sheet and headed off in search of the monsters. I must admit I was a bit disappointed, I was expecting some life sized monsters to be lurking in the woods and to be scared out of my wits. But all we got were some wooden cut out shaped figures. The trail was really easy to follow  and we had it completed in no time at all.  Perhaps it was aimed at a very young age group. Well anyway, the kids completed their sheets and put them in the box for the competition.

I soon realized  that we weren't going to be doing the gardens in the way that I wanted to because we needed to keep the children interested. Admiring the autumn foliage in the arboretum wasn't going to keep their attention for long. And checking the herbaceous borders to see all the dead flower heads left for winter structure and insect life was of no interest to the kids. Whilst I wandered around the kitchen garden, taking in the lovely purple kale, pak choi, dark red lettuce and  wondering how they managed to grow veg without having holes in the leaves, their grandad tried to keep them amused without them causing any damage.

So we let them run around in the log maze and climb to the top of the tower.  Then we found a fireplace in a clearing in the woods which we thought might be a bear's cooking place.  We walked along the path into the woods and found the bear hugging a tree and we thought he was a friendly bear. He hugged the children and they came to no harm.

We wandered further into the woods and found a willow village made by a local school and some animal sculptures made of wire, twigs and leaves.

And then we came upon the Log Ness Monster. It was made of logs, covered in wire netting which was to provide a habitat for wildlife, but which was also a great playground for children to run along. One end of the log monster had been made into a head shape with eyes and fangs. It was all great fun for children to climb and run along.

We had a really good day, the children enjoyed themselves, we discovered places we would not have  done had  the children not been with us and we left as always feeling we would have to return another day.

Clearing up

It's that time of year when there's lots of clearing up to be done in the garden and allotment.  We had a good weekend at the allotment with some lovely weather to keep us going. I went with a plan and worked through all the jobs on the list.  That's made me quite happy now. I love lists!

We've cleared away veg which have finished, weeded and dug over beds. The compost from the old potato bags have been spread over cleared areas and then these beds were covered with membrane to keep the weeds down. We  have manure to put down on some of the beds but as there's still stuff growing we'll have to leave it for a while.

There are plenty of vegetables in some of the beds to keep us going for a while. The leeks are doing well. I earthed them up but they won't be ready to pull for some time yet. There are parsnips, beetroot, celery and celeriac. It's the first time we've grown celery and celeriac and we weren't sure if they will do anything. At the moment they are just leaves with no sign of anything worth digging up.

The brassica bed has brussels sprouts, red cabbage, kale and purple sprouting broccoli which we are picking regularly.  We harvested one cute little squash plant. I pruned the raspberries and cleared the rhubarb.

My husband turned the compost heaps over.  I'm a bit wary of going near those compost heaps ever since I encountered the rat.  The mice are still around.  My daughter disturbed them as she was weeding.  It's a bit freaky when they suddenly shoot across the bed right next to you!  They were quite cute though and one kept poking it's head out of the hole to see if we were still there!