This week has been a strange week, the one I least look forward to all year, the week the clocks go back. I’m an outdoors sort of person, I love to be outside immersed in nature or in my garden. Turning the clocks back one hour makes this just that bit more difficult with my working hours. I’m up for work at 6:30 am, it’s dark. I leave work at 4pm, sunset time this week at home is 4:26pm. Assuming I leave work on time I get exactly 26 minutes of dusk per day, Monday to Friday. Needless to say my headtorch has had some use this week as I still need to get outside, it’s what keeps me sane. Tuesday evening was a very wet and rainy run in the dark with my fluorescent jacket on. Then Friday night was a headtorch lit 5 mile walk across the countryside and fields for a drink at the little microbrewery in the next village from home.
I don’t like dark and I don’t like being cold, so other than those lovely sunny crisp weekend mornings or those that are covered in snow, I’m not that keen on this time of year.
I’m also one of those people who daydreams a lot, about the most random things, and my mind wanders. I often stop myself and think, “What on earth am I thinking about that for?” In one of my moments this week I was thinking about what I would be if I came back in another life, I’ve no idea what got me onto thinking about that! This week I decided it would be a bear. Lots of fur to keep me warm and I could fall to sleep when all the autumn leaves have fallen and wake up at the end of February when the days start to extend again, perfect. Except that I love Christmas, so someone would need to wake me up for that!
So this weekend I was desperate to get outside having only seen the light through my office window all week. It was a nice weekend at home too, so I decided to spend all day on Saturday outside in my garden. I don’t seem to have been at home much recently. I was away all summer and then the weekends since summer I have been here, there and everywhere, catching up with all the friends and family who I did not see over summer. I think this has been my first full weekend at home.
I absolutely love my garden, and flowers. It got a little neglected over summer with me being away so it was ready for a good old tidy up and preparation for winter. Over the years I’ve done various evening classes after work as I love learning new things. The classes I’ve done have been varied. One of my favourites though, I did when I worked in Leeds city centre around 20 years ago. I wasn’t too far away from the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Harlow Carr, Harrogate so I embarked on a Certificate in Garden Design after work. I absolutely loved it. I think it has to be one of my most enjoyable qualifications. We were each given the dimensions and topography of a piece of land and it all culminated in the submission of a portfolio and a final garden design. The inspiration for my design was Gaudi’s Parc Guell in Barcelona. All the lines were flowing, not angular. There were lots of mosaic features in Mediterranean colours, flowing water and the planting was bright and fitted the Mediterranean theme. I loved it.
I owe my love of gardening and plants to my parents. They are both avid gardeners, even now in their eighties. I was lucky enough to be brought up in a house, where they still live, which has a huge garden. It is still one of my favourite places to be. Mum has a keen eye for planting combinations and it is full of colour all year. Dad’s lawn is his pride and joy. It’s always very green, has perfectly mown stripes in it. At the bottom of the garden sits a dovecote, which when I was small was filled with his collection of pure white fantail pigeons. The pigeons are long gone but the dovecote still has pride of place in the garden. I spent most of my time playing in the garden when I was small and I’m sure this is why I love my garden so much.
So this Saturday was a day of clearing all the summer perennials which have died back and planting up some winter colour as I absolutely have to have flowers and colour all year round. My garden was my absolute life saver during the pandemic, I don’t know what I would have done without it. I felt so lucky and can’t imagine what it must have been like to spend a lockdown without a garden as I was in mine all the time: reading, knitting, working on my laptop, on what is affectionately known as ‘Mum’s bench’, called this because everyone else has to move if I want to sit down on it. It is perfectly positioned just outside my back door, overlooking my bird feeders, under my pride and joy, which is my Japanese wisteria which is absolutely huge now and spans the full width of the side of the house and is full of purple flowers in May/June.
My bird feeders deserve a post of their own but basically, I have a number of them. Birds are as important to me as flowers in the garden. Each bird type has its own feeder. So there’s one full of niger seed for the goldfinches, greenfinches and bullfinches, suet for the robins, mealworms for the blackbird, no mess mixed seed for the chaffinches, sparrows and blue tits and peanuts for the nuthatches and woodpeckers. I can sit and watch them for hours and they all have their own little personalities. Despite his small size the male nuthatch is definitely the boss! If anyone else goes near his feeder when he’s there he’s so aggressive he can clear everyone within seconds, even the woodpecker who is four times his size.
So, I thought I’d share some pictures of my garden that I’ve taken through this year and some pictures of today’s planting. These are my favourite plants and an explanation of just why I like them.
Let’s start with spring and summer.
My hornbeam hedge. Now why do I like this? There are no flowers, I know, but this is the hedge which tells me it’s spring and I can stop being a bear. I love green, it’s my favourite colour because to me it just says spring is here and this is the first sign of spring in my garden, new shoots on my hornbeam hedge. The hedge is around 20 years old and I planted it when I first moved into the house. It is around 50 meters long and marks the boundary between the house and the fields behind. When I first moved in it was a new build house with one of those roughly put together builder’s fences marking the boundary. Although twice a year it’s a mammoth task clipping it I love it. It’s full of wildlife from spring to autumn and has been the nursery for so many baby birds and small mammals.
Once the hedge has got underway then the perennials start to appear. Foxglove, just so elegant and pretty in pink, planted under my wisteria.
Then comes the peony – bright pink, blousy, show off of a plant.
Then the lupin – erect and tall and adds height to the back of the border.
Then there’s the nepeta (catmint) – sweet purple thing that the bees absolutely love. This is positioned next to my self built bug-hotel which is usually the site of a bees nest each summer.
Then comes the ‘orange thing’ – called this because I’ve had it years, forgotten its name but I love it all the same.
Then a big pop of colour with the Rudbeckia goldsturm – absolutely love this one because it’s so bright yellow, with a lovely chocolate centre and flowers right through to October.
Then I have my little wall pots which I fill with lovely trailing red pelargoniums.
Last but not least is my number one summer favourite, the Echinacea purpurea – I just love the shape and colour of this one. An orange/brown cone in the centre with bright pink petals that go right back on themselves so it’s a bit like a badminton shuttlecock. The butterflies love this one!
Then onto autumn. The Echinacea and the Rudbeckias are still in flower but in autumn the Japanese maples or Acers come into their own. My favourite two from my own garden are Bloodgood – bright red leaves, and Katsura – starts off bright yellow/green and then turns orange as autumn progresses.
I also love hydrangeas in the autumn. I did not mention them in summer as although they are nice in summer they are one of those plants where I think the dead flower heads actually have more about them that the flowers in full bloom – closely knit petals and flowers forming a big dried fist of pink, purple and green. I always leave these and cut them off at the very end of autumn.
Winter is a bit more difficult but I just have to have colour and flowers and this is what I have being doing this weekend as I have to improvise and do a bit of planting of seasonal bedding. I do have some shrubs and perennials that give a bit of colour in winter. I have lots of cyclamen in the shady woody areas and these just form a lovely pink carpet at this time of year.
I also have my pyracantha bush which is full of the brightest orange berries just now. The blackbird loves these so the berries are normally quite short lived as he overindulges on his seasonal treat.
This weekend has been about planters. The pelargoniums in the wall planters get replaced with pansies – this year I’ve gone for purple and cream. I like pansies as they are so colourful. They last right through to spring, are really hardy and survive a Yorkshire winter and they are the flower with a smiley face. I think they look quite cheerful when they bob their heads around in the wind. The square planter under my front window also gets planted with them and they are the first thing I see when I step out of my car when I come home from work. At my front door I have two lead planters. In the summer these are filled with geraniums, petunias, bacopa, nemesia and a riot of summer colour. This weekend these have been replaced with violas, ivy, cyclamen and silver leaf to cheer me up when I walk in the door.
So that’s it. The garden put to bed until spring and my winter planting done which will hopefully keep me going until I’ve worked out how to become a bear and hibernate. There’s always a winter sun holiday that can be arranged if all else fails and I can’t make it to February, but given that we have Christmas in between I might just make it.