My Gardening DIARY

MONDAY

Planting 100 narcissus ‘W.P. Milner’ in all the central beds in the brick garden. It would be lovely to see their pretty pale lemon flowers across all the beds. Easier said than done though since autumnal perennials and grasses are towering everywhere and each bulb needs a 15cm hole!

TUESDAY

Robins are well into their autumnal, territorial concert. There is something clear, crisp and earnest about their song at this time of year, even though it is designed to ward off competition from competitors.

WEDNESDAY

Planting out a few new heleniums in spaces in the big veg troughs. Three plants of ‘Moorheim Beauty’ are already making new basal shoots.

THURSDAY

Magnificent stems of bright orange and red berries adorn the stems of Arum italicum ‘Marmoratum’. I’m trying to cover the ground underneath our exochorda with this plant so its dark green leaves with their white veins will carpet the ground. I’ll take some of the berries, rub off their flesh and sow them in seed trays but will also try sowing some directly into the earth below the shrub.

FRIDAY

Sowing Digitalis mertonensis, having collected the seed from plants. Although foxgloves are poisonous, the flower colour of this particular digitalis is almost edible – the colour you’d get if you crushed raspberries into thick double cream!

SATURDAY

On the skyline from where I sit writing this, there is a hedgerow that runs along from east to west with a number of young ash trees within it. In the evening they are silhouetted against the sky.

SUNDAY

Turfing out potatoes from the tree pots where we’ve grown most of our ‘Charlotte’ spuds. They’re stored in boxes and paper potato sacks. The excellent compost that remains is recycled, used to plant some of the narcissi that haven’t gone in the ground. Narcissus poeticus recurvus flowers very late and will take over when tulips fade.