December Gardening

It's almost a "believe it or not" time of the year regarding gardening for, given the very long spell of frosty weather, we might think there was no opportunity for gardening at all during this month and on the other hand we find it hard to imagine that some plants are actually looking very well …

Pushy-Down Things

It's Christmas season with 'Deck the halls with boughs of holly" running incessantly through my head ready to assail the ears of any passerbys - there weren't any - all the time I was in the garden today. Also running through my head was the title above, a little phrase from our youngest granddaughter when …

Who Would Have Thought…

Who would have thought that rain would be so welcome? It arrived overnight after ten days of unrelentingly cold frosty weather and, at last, there is a thaw, a softening of the ground and a chance for our winter-flowering plants to regain some lost time and, of course, to bring some interest and pleasure to …

The Spirit of Christmas Gardening.

A package arrived in this morning's post, earlier than had been expected though not earlier than had been hoped. The order had been placed online with a relatively new online UK business, https://www.dancoopergarden.com/, at what Dan told me was the very last moment for it to arrive before Christmas - and as the order was …

Gardening in November

Why, it's almost a self-contradictory statement - Gardening in November! - for few months lend themselves so little to the enjoyment of time working outdoors. It was a month of regular and heavy rain, even some flooding; of strong winds and gales, of fog and frost and of shortening days with late sunrises and early …

The Early Season

It was rather a weak start to the snowdrop season here, a little disappointing but not entirely unexpected. The earliest flowering snowdrops here are of the Greek species, Galanthus reginae olgae and its cultivars and these don't enjoy the conditions in my garden. I suppose that should come as no surprise when their native range …

Rewilding – Briefly!

When I read, so very often, suggestions that we should leave our gardens go a little wild, should allow the wildflowers (weeds!) grow in the lawn etc I feel it is a very misplaced suggestion when directed at a rural garden. There are about two miles of wild hedgerows between our garden and the beginnings …

I Suppose That’s It Now Until February!

We were very much in that Carpe Diem frame of mind all of last week. There had been a long run of bad weather with particularly high rainfall and strong winds so that there had been many days spent indoors and cabin fever was beginning to set in. Because of this we had determined that …

That’s it now, probably, maybe, kind of…

Oh, there comes a time when you wish the seasons/weather would simply get on with it. I can tire of this neither here nor there season - a touch of the biblical, "Would that you were hot or cold etc". We have had a mild autumn, very mild, warmer than usual for this time of …

It was the Best of Days; it was the Worst of Days!

Not quite as Charles Dickens wrote but my view is of a narrower, more immediate and more intimate section of life - just two days in my own garden, to be exact. Just to differ a little further from Mr. Dickens, it was a case of the worst of days followed by the best of …