Winter Wonders

We're visiting friends and family in Hampshire again soon, which reminded me that I never shared the pictures from January 2018's visit to the gardens at Mottisfont Abbey.

Although best known for its rose gardens, Mottisfont also has a truly glorious winter garden and naturalised snowdrops growing through the woods and meadows beside the river Test.

There are formal areas too, with pleached and pollarded trees, whose structure shows up particularly well once their leaves have fallen.  With the branches bare, there are also views of the house and grounds that would usually be hidden.

Even the famous rose garden retained a quiet beauty, with its neat lavender-edged beds and evergreen hedges, enhanced by the long shadows of winter days.

The highlight was definitely the winter garden itself, full of surprisingly vibrant colour from witch-hazel (Hamamellis) and dogwood (Cornus) and the vivid pink-purple shades of Cyclamen coum, a delightfully delicate little bloom which looks amazing in large drifts.

Mottisfont's winter garden wanders up and down a sloping site, combining its flowering and foliage plants really beautifully.  We were lucky enough to visit on a cool but sunny day when the colours showed at their very best.

Many other National Trust properties are also developing winter gardens.  While there's no doubt it extends the period of interest for visitors to the property and probably has commercial advantages, it also means that there are valuable late and early flowering plants available to help insects.

They are also a source of inspiration for any of us looking to keep our own gardens attractive and bug-friendly throughout the year.

Into Autumn

If the weather is too wet or cold for gardening, there's a better chance that I'll be writing about gardening, so after another long break, here we are back at the gardening blog.  

We had our first hard frost of the autumn last night, so there was a white frost on the garden this morning.  Unfortunately, I had to dash off to work before it was light enough for photographs.  The garden is looking tidy right now, as we have kept the leaves swept off the paths and weeds out of the joints between the paving slab.  There are still a few late summer flowers but most of the colour and structure comes from varying leaf shapes and shades now.

The herb garden is certainly looking a bit dull without the flowers of the roses, salvias or verbena bonariensis.  Since this photo was taken, I've put some new pots in each corner, of the same design as the tall copper-Verdigris effect ones by the path in the photo above, planted up with tulip and crocus bulbs for the spring.  It's always nice to look forward to some colour for the new year. 

In the veg plot, the brassicas are thriving.  There is also a very decent crop of leeks, although a few have been affected by a rot problem of some sort which has collapsed the stems.  I need to tidy up the currant bushes and there will be some serious lopping of the large hazel tree beside the greenhouse this winter, hopefully to encourage the pollarded stumps to throw up some nice, straight poles for use as bean supports or even to make hurdles to edge the beds and enable us to build them up with extra compost.

Unlike last autumn, when we were laying our new paths in the veggie plot, we can take it easy in our garden this year and use more of our free time for exploring other gardens and parks.  

We've in annual tickets for Trentham Gardens, as I want to follow the progress of the woodland meadow plantings.  Here are a few photos from earlier this month...

We're also planning to resume our strolls through the parks of the Six Towns: here are some photos from last weekend in Victoria Park, Tunstall, which is also seeing some much-needed restoration and improvement work and will be interesting to keep an eye on throughout the year.

One good thing about the shortening days is that the sun now sets within view of the landing window, rather than behind our neighbours' house so, although the lack of daylight limits what we can do outdoors, we can enjoy some glorious winter sunsets.

At the End of an Endless Summer?

Hello again!  Is there anybody there?

It's a very long time since I last wrote a gardening blog, not least because a couple of hours a day has been devoted to keeping the garden and allotment alive through the drought - yes drought, in North Staffordshire!  As if my arms aren't long enough, I've been hauling a couple of 12 litre cans around doing careful and thorough watering of everything that has needed it in the garden and down on the allotment.  That's being remedied right now with some spectacularly heavy showers although it's surprising how dry the ground still is a few centimetres down, as I found while splitting and moving some of my hellebores yesterday.

The other reason this blog has been neglected is that there's a new one for younger readers, staring Sonning Bear, the little teddy we rescued from a tree by the Thames on our travels last year.  You can read what he's been up to at:  https://bearonaboat.blogspot.com/

So, how are things in the garden?  Last year, it was quite badly neglected while we did our narrowboat odyssey to Godalming and back.  This year, as we've stayed at home much more, it's looking much tidier and a great deal more productive.  Here are some photos...

A good idea proved to be moving the solar fountain out of the herb garden and onto the patio, where we could see and hear it better than in it's old spot.  This has also made it easier to reach and maintain the roses in the herb garden, which have put on a good amount of extra growth this year, due to getting regular care and watering.

The last of the lilies are now in flower nearby.  It has been a superb year for them, despite the appearance of the usual lily beetles.  Being at home, we have stayed on top of the squishing where they are concerned and were rewarded with some fabulous and fragrant blooms throughout July:

 A mistake - at least in the short-term - was deciding to treat myself to some new (expensive) roses for the front garden early in June.  The front garden is always full of colour throughout the spring but gets rather dull in late summer, once the Alchemilla mollis starts to look dusty.

The plan was therefore to take some big chunks of that out and plant roses in the gaps.  I bought six of those gorgeous David Austin shrub roses.  They looked so nice, I treated myself to three more.  It was forecast to rain heavily that weekend.  It didn't - in fact, it didn't rain like it meant it until yesterday!  The roses are still rather short to show up well but, when they have reached their proper height and are all in flower again, they should add some much-needed colour.  The two looking best right now are Lady Hamilton and Jubilee Celebration.

 Lady of Shalot and Queen of Sweden are also looking gorgeous.

Anyway, that's all for today's update.  There will be more soon, including a proper look at the veg plot and a look at some of this year's surprising harvest, including a great crop of hazelnuts and even fresh figs!

Snowdrop Season

The snow has gone, the weather is getting milder and the days longer, and Gardener's World is back on the TV, so it must be spring, although my snowdrops are still in full bloom a good couple of months after they started coming out.  It seems that the regular falls of light, powdery snow have kept them in a state of suspended animation for a longer than usual flowering season.

February Snowdrops

This was bad news for a friend, travelling to the south coast from Scotland, who I promised a pot of snowdrops when I lifted and split them, expecting to be doing so the weekend before her visit.  Unfortunately, they look just too good to disturb just yet.

Snowdrops in mid March

Although we missed the more dramatic snowfalls from the 'Beast from the East', we seem to have had regular snow this winter, starting with a covering quite early in December accompanied by some hard frosts.

Late December snow

Christmas itself was fairly mild but there have been several dustings of snow and some cold nights since.  If not on this site, I have been blogging about some of this, including some photos of the garden, but from the perspective of a couple of little friends enjoying themselves in the wintery conditions, but I haven't been organised enough to both keep up with the bears' adventures and do a proper garden blog!

Snow - late February 2018

Hopefully, I'll manage to do some more regular updates as the garden comes into bloom.  After being blasted by the cold winds and drooping alarmingly, the hellebores have fully recovered and are starting to really flourish, while crocuses and primroses are starting to come out too.

There's work in progress in the veg plot as well, but I think I'll save that for the next update - hopefully this side of Easter!

Harvest Home

Doesn't the allotment look smart?  Obviously, we must have been looking after it assiduously throughout the summer...

Er, no!  Having pledged to keep this blog updated regularly, I've actually spent most of the summer on a very long narrowboat journey from our home mooring at Kidsgrove down to Godalming and back.  I'll be including a few items from that journey in future posts as we stopped off at several places of horticultural interest but today it's time to celebrate a great crop of taters and squashes.

'Kestrel' potatoes

We lifted the usual Kestrel second-earlies a week ago and were pleased to find them in good condition with few signs of slug damage or millipede ingress, which has been a major problem in previous years despite earlier liftings.  After a few days to rest my back, I set to work on the main crop; 2 beds (12 tubers planted in each) of Pink Fir Apple, one of Golden Wonder (dotted with random reds and blacks from a couple of years ago) and one of Highland Burgundy Red.

Pink Fir Apple - less knobbly then usual!

All three varieties gave good yields of largely undamaged tubers of a decent size and shape. The PFAs in particular were bigger than in previous years and much more uniform, less eccentric shapes, although there are a few spectacular monsters as usual. 

The other pleasant surprise has been a superb crop of pumpkins and squashes, considering the lack of care they had throughout the summer.  I grew several different varieties from packs of out-of-date seed, with good rates of germination despite that.  The varieties grown were 'Small Sugar', 'Crown Prince', 'Avalon' butternut and a spaghetti squash, along with an ornamental swan gourd.

Squash - small sugar - growing in midsummer

Scrambled over a cane framework to keep the young fruits away from damp soil and slugs, they would have benefited from more pruning and training, and watering during the hottest periods perhaps but, despite being left for months without attention, we have a decent crop, although the swan gourds aren't very swany, having developed straight necks as they hung from the framework!

Some of the squashes

We'll just have to make sure we eat them in good time,  They're too good to waste on Halloween lanterns!

Spring Sunshine

Back garden in bloom

Due to funding problems, I've been on short-time from my Citizens' Advice job for the last couple of months.  It makes doing even part of my usual job tricky, as it's easy to lose track of what's going on in the team and in the complex world of Social Security law and, unsurprisingly, my pay has dropped through the floor too.  However, the compensation for all of this has been that there's probably no better season in which to have extra time off.  The garden is looking the best it has since we moved in and the allotment is also unusually trim and tidy.  I've even finished off a few decorating snags around the house that have been outstanding for a long while.

Garden veg patch

It's been warm enough to risk planting out the courgettes, squashes and runner beans, using home-grown poles from our coppiced hazel as well as the long prunings from the Bramley apple tree.  The latter have been fashioned into a framework to support the squashes as climbing plants rather than just scrambling across the ground, which I'm hoping will keep the fruits away from slugs and damp soil.

The globe artichokes are doing well, although may have to get the chop early in the autumn to allow the tomatoes in the greenhouse to get enough sunshine to ripen; at the moment, they actually provide helpful shade to their pots and roots.

The greenhouse gets a little shade first thing in the morning from the wisteria, now in full bloom and looking great.  We can't see it from the kitchen as the clematis arch is in the way and has got badly overgrown, although I can't prune it as there is a dunnock nesting in it!

Some of the sarracenias have been soaking up the sunshine - and a few wasps and flies too!

A couple of unusual features in the front garden are the sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) which grows around the base of a couple of the apple trees and an experiment that worked surprisingly well, planting Spanish bluebells in the pots either side of the front door.  The only problem with the latter is trying to decide whether to leave them there to die down or lift them to replant the pots.  They are in an awkward dry shade spot which makes replacing them with anything permanent quite tricky.

I had a very successful plant sale last month and have been selling spare flowers and veg plants in the office on my odd days in.  If the reduced hours are likely to persist, I'll also be promoting my gardening services again, so may finally get the opportunity to rehome the last of the hydrangea cuttings.