Readers’ gardens
A developing family garden and allotment in Staffordshire, with year-round interest.
The mixed weather has meant the garden has changed from unworkably soggy to beautifully frosty, then to cheerfully sunlit and windswept, sometimes on the same day! They say ‘there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing’, so I tend to don layers and get out in the fresh air as much as possible to do what I can. You certainly feel better for it!
Damp has damaged the tree peony’s buds and shoots so I’ve trimmed them along with any other broken shrubs showing wind or football damage.
While buds and shoots are vying for our attention, the snowdrops and crocus are giving a very welcome show. The hydrangea and honesty seed heads, along with cotoneaster ‘Cornubia’ have been looking gorgeous edged with sugary frost set against blue skies. Our infant mahonia ‘Charity’ is uplifting and delicately fragrant, while numerous fat buds on the camellia bush are teasing me with the sight of their deep pink petals beneath. Viburnum tinus and skimmia ‘Magic Marlot’ are both eye-catching at this time of year. Isn’t it great to get outside on those invigorating and fresh days and see everything waking up? Spring’s definitely on its way!
There have been so many birds visiting the garden. The feeders are regularly topped up and there are plenty of home-made fat balls. We love watching them enjoy the feast and recently recorded the number of visitors for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch.
In the sales, my husband and I agreed on two red pots with shaped box to go in them, and we feel that these frame the front door just as we wanted.
I tidied all the pots in the greenhouse and am pleased to report that the autumn sowings and cuttings are progressing well. Having sorted all the seeds and labels, I’ll be sowing several flowers and vegetables in the coming weeks, for the garden and allotment. Favourites include cosmos, rudbeckia, verbena and new ones shall be cucumber ‘Marketmore 76’, Stipa tenuissima and hemerocallis.
This week, the allotment has finally had some muchneeded attention! The autumn raspberries are pruned and I’m sowing crops including broad bean ‘Bunyard’s Exhibition’, pea ‘Meteor’, parsnip ‘Hollow Crown’ and spinach, as I clear the beds. Next, I need to neaten the plot edges and remember the importance of crop rotation and secure protection.
When the garden wakes up, there’s much to do, but there’s no stopping us when we’ve got a spring in our step!
A Norfolk garden, with shady borders, wildlife areas and a large herbaceous bed.
We’ve had some substantial rain at last to top up the ground reserves and hopefully give the plants a good start going into spring. We also had a few slight frosts and this, coupled with the rain, has made the borders unworkable, so we’ve stayed off them.
We’ve tackled a few smaller jobs, such as any necessary winter pruning, but other than that not much else can be done. There are signs of the first spring bulbs popping up, with snowdrops and daffodils appearing everywhere – so spring is on its way and the big seasonal tidy-up is about to begin as the garden, slowly but surely, reawakens.
We’ve had to make a decision regarding the conifer hedge at the end of the garden. It has become too tall to easily manage but has also developed brown patches due to, we think, conifer aphid. We began reducing the height, but soon realised that, because of its growth habit, this was going to be, at best, impractical and, at worst, impossible! So we’ve decided on a more radical solution. Still a lot of work, but we’ve a plan to make a new project of it.
As our neighbours have erected a fence behind it, we’ve decided to cut the whole hedge back to bare trunks and then use them as a framework of supports on which to train evergreen shrubs – our current thinking is Cotoneaster lacteus.
We plan to completely remove two or three of the trunks in order to create spaces in which to plant sorbus ‘Joseph Rock’ to tie in with others already in the garden. At one end we’ll plant a malus ‘Golden Hornet’. Because of the depth of the current hedge, we’ll then have room to plant Viburnum davidii and Sarcococca confusa in front, and as all of these plants bear fruit it will continue the wildlife theme that we have in that area.
I gave our wildlife pond a tidy in November last year. Cutting down the Iris pseudacorus leaves a raft of matted roots, which creates an area of very shallow water, and the birds have found this a wonderful place to bathe and drink.
Just outside our kitchen window an eyesore has been turned into an eye-catching feature. We disguised an unsightly manhole cover with an old shallow butler sink, which we planted up with alpines and succulents, but it never looked attractive, then in a moment of whimsy I decided to make a fairy garden!
So, with potting grit, small white stones and some blue aquarium grit to give the effect of a river, and the addition of little buildings, I began creating. Some of the rockery plants were placed around the edge to give some life to it, and it has now become a talking point. Haven’t seen a fairy yet though!