Misty mornings but garden marvels!
Misty mornings and grey days seem to be the weather trend, but that hasn't stopped us. We’ve been tidying up the beds and borders, raking off leaves which we put into our new wire leaf bin, and then clearing any weeds and debris.
Pete has been busy removing turf from the edge of the lawn, both to widen the adjacent border and make the lawn an easier shape to mow. He has forked over the area and in the spring I’ll plant it up with bearded irises, which need to be moved from another part of the border. We’ll also add a couple of Caryopteris clandonensis ‘Heavenly Blue’, which will continue the existing theme in that border. We refer to it as the nectar border because it’s a mix of single-flowered shrub roses, buddlejas, lavender and other plants that are beneficial to wildlife. The turf that was removed won't go to waste. It has been stacked, grass side down, at the back of one of our wild areas, to create another habitat.
The cotoneaster in the front garden is still a feature, even though it overhangs the drive so everyone has to drive around it! It’s due for a good prune. Despite the inconvenience it causes, it does look spectacular.
The tree surgeons took the top out of a rather large conifer by our front gate, as growth was impeding telephone wires.
They also removed some bottom branches from a large Acer negundo ‘Flamingo’. While on site, they were also able to take down a large bough from another enormous conifer in the back garden which had broken a few days earlier during one of the December storms.
Still to do is the clearing up of herbaceous plants and the grass and geranium beds. I leave doing this as long as I can. All that I cut down now are any plants that have collapsed; the rest I leave until spring, as they give the wildlife somewhere to overwinter.