Readers’ gardens
A Norfolk garden, with shady borders, wildlife areas and a large herbaceous bed.
The roses have all but finished flowering. The Rugosa types have formed fabulous hips, which give a wonderful show and provide the birds with a late food source. The rowan, hawthorn and yew are heavily laden with berries and the blackbirds are already eating their fill. The Viburnum opulus in the summerhouse garden has had the most wonderful autumn leaf colour and is covered with small, jewel-like berries.
Most of the work from now on will be staying on top of clearing away leaves. We keep them for making leaf mould, which goes back onto the garden next year to help feed the soil. A large maple in the front garden drops most of its leaves into our neighbour’s garden and they’re more than happy for us to collect them up, too, which makes more for us! With a bit of work, we can help nature replace the goodness which a season’s growing can take away from the soil. The vegetable garden, albeit quite a small one, is like a miniature walled garden. It has provided us with some good crops this year. The tomatoes cropped for weeks in the small, lean-to greenhouse. I’ve now re-used the pea troughs to plant up kale ‘Starbor’, and have put some more in a raised bed. I still have three pots of parsnip ‘Gladiator’ and two of leek ‘Musselburgh’. Like most people, I’ve had a problem with rust attacking the leeks this year but, having stripped off the affected leaves, they’re recovering, but I’ll be watching them closely. The greenhouse has been cleared and cleaned, ready for overwintering plants. Now I just have to sit down with the seed catalogues and get ready for next year. The herbaceous border still has a lot of colour, although it’s starting to slow down now. We can see some plants need replacing and some that will have to be moved. We’ve just had a delivery of new cirsiums and we’re looking forward to getting them in and seeing how they perform next year.