A Photographic Review of the Year in the Garden, Part 1

General Interest

Waterford, southeast Ireland. 2 January 2021

Here we are into the New Year, 2021. The Roman god, Janus, was generally depicted as being two-headed or two-faced, one looking forward and the other backward. I suppose we all look forward and hope that the coming year will be better than the last and, given the track record of 2020, I think there is a good chance that may well be the case. A Happy New Year and Best Wishes to all who have come to read here.

Over the Christmas period I have been looking back at photographs of the garden taken in the last year and thought it would be a good idea to use them to review the year. The exercise brought home to me just how many photographs I take – for some months, as many as an album a day. The result was that I had far more photographs than I needed and had to make choices. I generally err on the side of using far more photographs that is really necessary but I enjoy taking photographs of the garden and the plants as much as I enjoy the gardening. The selection is simply those photographs which appealed to me as I went through the albums of the past year.

I hope you enjoy the first six months of the year, a slideshow for each month, and I’ll put a similar post together for the second six months next Saturday.

January:

February

March

April

May

June

I’m sharing this blog with a group of fellow bloggers who contribute to a “Six on Saturday” theme which is hosted by “The Propagator” on his blog site. To read more contributions to the Six on Saturday theme go to The Propagator’s entry for today, scroll down to the comments and you will find other bloggers have posted links to their Saturday entries there. Lots to read!

Published by Paddy Tobin

A keen amateur gardener. Interested in wildflowers with a particular interest in native Irish orchids.

Published

49 thoughts on “A Photographic Review of the Year in the Garden, Part 1”

  6. What a beautiful garden and having so many photos means that you can put together such wonderful slide shows. Note to self – take more photos and remember the names of things that I have planted!

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    1. I’m a great fellow for labels, Joy, because I’ve a terrible memory. Also, I put the names on the photographs when I take them so I have names to hand when I look back – and it’s a great way to search back over the year via the photographs.

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  8. Lovely to see what awaits us in the comimg months. I am to give a zoom talk on winter gardening to the local garden club later this month. May I please use a few of your Jan-March photos for illustration, properly acknowledged, of course?

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    1. You are most welcome to use the photographs for your Zoom talk. Any chance you could share the link to the talk and we could watch?

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    1. In this, I am the Undergardener! Mary is the boss in the garden, the one who makes the big decisions on design and planting. There are a few areas where I am allow play but I play second fiddle to her superior knowledge and taste!

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  10. Thanks for sharing the photos Paddy. It was a balm for my eyes, I especially liked the ones from January and February. Happy New Year to you and yours.

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  12. Happy New Year to you Paddy, and to Mary. Your photos brought a smile to my face. You have such a beautiful garden and some fantastic plants. The Hornbeam stand is my favourite I think.

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    1. Oh, I’m going to quote you on that – about the group of hornbeams as Mary has her doubts about it at times. It was my idea and I like it!

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    1. Thank you very much, Linda. No, we don’t open to the public though we have had fellow members of our local garden clubs here over the years. Opening to the public is something I would not enjoy.

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    1. Many thanks! Yes, I simply agree with her choices as I feel her taste is far better than mine – but the compost bins, the snowdrops, the grass, the hedges and the edges are mine! All mine!

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      2. We have lawns and we have grass – the two little garden areas to the front of the house – the square lawn and the circular lawn receive some attention – a yearly application of a suitable fertilizer and weedkiller and are cut with a cylinder mower to give those attractive stripes. The rest is simply grass, full of weeds, but it kept well cut so can appear reasonably tidy – it’s an illusion – cut often and keep the edges tidy and the eye is fooled. Yes, the purple is a cyclamen and fast becoming my very favourite – it is Cyclamen purpurascens and I was given a few corms by a gardener at the Villa Balbianello on Lake Como, Italy. I was thrilled but, after a walk through local woodland, I realised he had given me what he considered a weed in his garden. I love it as it stays in flower for ages and ages – since midsummer and still going well.

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      3. Same here with the lawn, though st augustine is too coarse for my taste and that is what grows here. And I use as few herbicides as possible. My mother always referred to this as southern lawn ..mowing the weeds. How wonderfully romantic to get cyclamen from Lake Como…and it is a weed there.

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  15. Paddy, your garden is sensational. Congratulations to Mary and her young helper …. So many plants to drool over. That yellow snowdrop and, a particular favourite, the erythroniums. An early 2021 treat.

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    1. Now, it is important to point out that I am the old helper! That little yellow snowdrop is one I like very much. It arose in a friend’s garden and she gave it to me. It is without a name to date but deserves one, I think – in due time when I have built up the numbers.

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      2. I have a good foundling of my own also which I am bulking up at present and may name it in due course.

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      3. I have had a few seedlings though nothing distinctive. I’m
        determined on a bit of hybridising this year in snowdrops and miniature narcissii. How about Golden Fleece with Big Boy? Big profits.

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      4. “The new names on the sales tables!” Nothing (very little, at any rate) is new in the snowdrop world other than the names.

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  18. Wonderful photos of a glorious garden. A real pleasure to move through the months and see the seasonal changes. As we say in NZ ‘Ka nui te pai!’ ‘Awesome!’ Thank you for sharing.

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  20. This is a wonderful record of the seasons and reminds me that 2020 has held much beauty as well. In particular, I enjoyed the sinuous and lichen covered trunks of the trees along your woodland walk, the native bee orchid (lovely!), and of course the partridges.

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