March and April

 Where did that time go, is it really almost May?

The weather is still wet and cold. It was only 1 degree at night on the 19th April, and that was in the greenhouse! No wonder we are having trouble getting some of the seeds to germinate even with a heated bench. Just to confuse further, it was 17 degrees outside the next day.

There is one area of the garden which looks lovely now and that is the bottom of the lawn in the front garden. When we moved here nearly 15 years ago there were a few cowslips on the lawn at the end. We decided to leave them and over the years we have added various spring plants and bulbs to enhance the area.

The cowslips are opening by the end of March. There have been snowdrops, anemone blanda, snakes head fritillary and crocus. The tall spikes of camissia are up now and the flowers will open in May.

Then will come the yellow rattle which has established now and controls the grass.

We leave the area to flower and then go to seed, eventually strimming at the end of August/early September and then mow for the rest of the season.

Mid April, a golden sea at the end of the garden.

february honey bees

In February, if it is not raining and the temperature is around 10 degrees or more then the honey bees will be flying, looking for food. They do not hibernate during the winter but keep warm by clustering together in their hive. They feed on their honey stores and if the hive is managed by bee keepers they also have a sugar block called foundation to eat.

But with the first bit of warmth they are out and about buzzing in the gardens.

You may think there is not much food for them in February, but if you grow the right plants the garden will be buzzing .

Snowdrops are wonderful at this time of year, brightening up the dullest spot and full of nectar and pollen for the bees.

The special varieties of snowdrop are also good food for bees, this is Diggory.

Crocus and Hellebore are a good food source.

Mistletoe, the almost insignificant flowers are easily spotted when you hear the buzzing coming from the branches that are covered in mistletoe.

Sarcococca, again like the mistletoe, the flowers are very small but the scent is amazing. Planted beside a path you can smell them several metres away and as you get closer the buzzing sound announces that the bees are feeding.

January 2023

 A New Year and the weather is still up and down.

Now 17 days in we have had higher than normal temperatures double figures for nine of the days and reaching 12..4 degrees. Then yesterday it only reached 4 degrees during the day and dropped to -5.8 last night. So the garden is all white again.

The snow in early December stayed, along with below freezing temperatures, for more than 7 days. It was quite a relief when the white went. It will be a couple of months before I will discover how many plants I have lost but the biggest and saddest loss for me is the aeonium. I have built up a collection, from just one cutting, over the last 10 years. Adding a few more unusual varieties in the last couple of years. Apart from a few pots (all I can fit in the house) the rest, about 30 pots,  have previously survived all winter in a small bubble wrapped greenhouse. But when I got to the green house this year, after the thaw, the aeoniums had drooped and softened to a mush. They are a succulent so the stems had just frozen, and being full of water they collapsed and rotted. Apart from the 4 "special" ones, I am now left with just 6, 4 of which are the cuttings from last year. The lovely tall older ones are all lost.

On a brighter note, it is January and the start of snowdrops. Mrs McNamara is out now with many others, the green shoots pushing through the soil and the white tips forming.

                                                                    Mrs McNamara

                                                        The lovely Cyclamen coum 

                                Rhubarb is coming through too, so time to cover some with the forcing pots to get                                                         early bright pink stems, delicious.                                                      

                                                

a touch of frost and snow

 The warm weather of November has well and truly gone. Suddenly it is very cold.

In the garden the frost on many plants is very attractive.

Cottoneaster

ornamental grasses

Heuchera

Heuchera

Rosemary

Then on Sunday 11th it started to snow and snowed all day!!

I will not be doing anything in the garden today!

November

 It has been unseasonably hot for a while now, but the weather has turned much colder now, more like we would expect in November,

Night time temperatures are dropping to 2 or 3 degrees and day temperatures are not often in double figures. We have had 54 mm rainfall in November!

Some of the plants are so confused, have we just had spring? what happened to winter? or dear hear it comes!

In the garden we have a nice clematis growing over an arch, Sunset, it usually flowers in May and June. Most of the foliage has died off for the winter and now we have a flower!

Other plants that seem a bit confused because of the really warm weather we have had in October and early November are:

                                                    Campanula

                                                    Rudbeckia

                                                        Echinacea

                                                        Echinops, all the flowers had turned into attractive seed heads many                                                         weeks ago and then another flower spike came up!

                                                           This flowers in the summer!

November Figs!!

We have a large fig tree trained against a south facing wall and I have taken a cutting from this which is now against the east facing wall in the fruit cage. I believe it is Brown Turkey.

The fig has 2 crops each year but rarely does the second crop ripen in this country.

In 2020 we had a fantastic crop 462 figs. They start to ripen in July with the bulk being picked in August and an odd few in September and early October.

This tree was getting out of hand, even blocking the door of a nearby greenhouse. So in the winter 2020/21 We gave it quite a drastic prune.

As a result we only picked 29 figs in 2021, most in September.

In 2022 we have picked 97 figs, 22 in October and amazingly 3 in November.

These were certainly from the second crop, they are usually hard green and small, they have to be removed over winter to stop the tree using energy in the Spring to try and ripen them.

The effects of a very hot and exceptionally long summer/autumn.

You can see here the small green second crop at the end of October and one has ripened. When ripe they swell and  turn dark brown droop downwards and are soft to touch. All the leaves have already fallen off.

A fig in November ready to eat.

October colour

Autumn is one of my favourite times of the year, especially October because of the wonderful autumn colours on the trees and shrubs.

With the extreme heat this summer, plants in the garden were flowering, fruiting, dying back and some repeat flowering. They were confused and with some leaves browning and falling before they had changed colour, I wondered if we would get the normal October display.

However, nature has come up trumps as usual and the wonderful, yellows, reds, oranges and all shades of green and brown are to be seen in gardens, woods, hedgerows and field margins across the country.

In our garden here are a few of the lovely colours, some from berries, but mostly the leaf colour, blueberries are so intense, a delight to gaze upon.

Blueberry leaves take on wonderful colours before they eventually drop. We have to grow them in pots as they require acidic soil. Our soil is alkaline so the blueberries are in ericaceous compost.

Lots of ornamental grasses change colours in the autumn, this one I leave all winter even when the colours fade and it turns brown. It is then cut to the ground in early spring when the new growth starts to emerge.

Peony leaves turn a lovely colour at this time of year, I leave them on until new shoots appear next year.

Pyracanths' berries, red, yellow and orange provide colour in the garden and food for the birds in autumn.

                                                       Berberis has berries in autumn too.