Still January – 2021

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January

This picture of of my vegetable garden planning was shown on BBC Look East!

It seems to have been a long month, we’ve had lots of rain, snow, fog and more recently, Storm Christoph. I have had a few more days off since the last blog post, due to the weather rather than the pandemic. Today was a beautiful sunny day but I was at home because Friday’s garden is still flooded.

Snow in the back field a week ago.

Since the last post I have been rose pruning and general tidying of the borders, trying to make the best of the emerging spring flowers.

Weeded and compost added, ready for spring.

I have also started spreading a nice thick layer of muck on my vegetable beds at the pub.

Ready for the vegetable beds.

The rectangular planter has a good crop of wasabi mustard, not thinned, the round pots are my newly transplanted salad leaves.

Salad leaves in the polytunnel.

In the polytunnel, I have transplanted my salad leaves, sown in the autumn. Winter lettuce, corn salad, rocket and beetroot, for the red leaves. Not ideal when it is going to be frosty but they were getting too big and starting to rot off.

The snowdrops came out!

At home today so no excuse for not getting on with my own garden. Always first is to clean out the animals. I can’t let the chickens out of their run at the moment so they like to get in on the action.

As soon as I take the side off to clean out the hen house they are in to have a look.

Beautiful blues skies and I found ladybirds on the yucca as I was cutting off the dead flowers.

I have made a start on my, rather neglected, front garden.

Mr Robin at the top of a tall conifer, singing to the moon.

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Back at work- January 2020

My first week back at work after the Christmas break and it’s been hard.

There have been a few highlights, finding the aconites and first snowdrops and hellebores.

But it has been relentlessly cold, I know it is January, and sometimes wet.

Braving the rain in my 4 hats!

I had 1 day off because the ground was too sodden and a brief glimmer of sun on Thursday afternoon

More Hellebores in the sunshine

I’ve had quite a few chats with resident robins and discovered, through an online thread, that it is common practice for us horticulturists to chat with birds, snails, plants in fact, most living things and sometimes stones too. Very relieved that it isn’t just me!

So to Friday, minus 2°C as I drove to work and only reaching 0° all day, and foggy too. This garden was more flooded than I had expected and I knew that it would be quite damp.

Over full pond and flooded lawn

Flooded flower bed

I managed to find enough to do out of the water but it was really, really cold and I hope it goes down soon. The weather forecast isn’t great for next week!

Keep looking for those signs of spring.

I almost forgot, I harvested the first flower sprouts this week.

January 8th 2019

First day with any length of sunshine since Christmas day, and it felt weirdly like March as it was so mild, about 10 degrees.

Garrya elliptica.

 

 Good to be back at work and time to burn off a few of those excess pounds by barrowing muck to spread on the garden, and it was big garden today so good exercise.

Iris unguicularis

After being away for a couple of weeks I like to make a tour and see what has changed. We’ve really only had one or two proper frosts so far this winter so things are getting advanced already.

Always a thrill to see the first snowdrops out, there are a lot more to come.

 

Bergenia and Viburnham tinus putting on a good show.

Nearly but not quite, Pulmonaria and hellebores still in bud.

Even a great tit singing his ‘teacher teacher’ song.

Of course things will change, there is already cold weather in the forecast. I don’t mind a bit of frost or snow, to set the seasons straight, kill a few pests and make everything look photogenic; as long as it doesn’t last too long.

Meanwhile I am enjoying the slightly longer day length and the promise of things to come.

Looking Back

New year seems a good time to look back on the last twelve months of gardening. I started at Kenton Hall in January 2018 so this presents itself as a perfect opportunity to look at the changes over a year of extremes. Unfortunately I don’t have any of the snow as I didn’t go that week! The gardens of Kenton Hall provide a stunning location for weddings in the summer months and my job was to keep them up to standard.

January

 

It seems so long ago! I can remember being very cold and the first day that I did here there was a heavy rainstorm. I could see it coming but it was my first day and I didn’t want to give up until it was raining badly enough. I got soaked through to the skin. So what was here was overgrown shrubs and herbaceous perennials. I love a challenge!

February

 

Getting stuck in. Cutting back everything, perennials, grasses and shrubs, including evergreen ones as much as I dare, just so that I can see what is there.

April

 

Things start greening up. The primroses look fabulous along the moat.

May

The first wedding of the season was in May so lots of weeding in preparation, fortunately the owner does the hedging and grass as there is a lot of it. The house provides a stunning backdrop for photos, and the lupins came out, hurrah!

 

July

 

 

The beginning of the heatwave. The borders are full and the grass is just about hanging on. Flowering now Stipa gigantia, catmint, Achillea cloth of gold.

 

August

 

Still looking green, the main flower here was the almost complete bed of Japanese anemones but also shrubby potentilla and the grasses were looking good. I had been coming regularly, but not that frequently, mainly in the week before each wedding.

October

 

The wedding season had finished now, and I had started to cut back the finished flowers. A lot of plants were just getting to their best, especially the asters (michaelmas daisies) and fuchsia. The leaves were starting to fall off the trees at the back.

 

 

November

 

You can see that whereas mid afternoon in summer is still scorching hot, at the same time in November the shadows are really lengthening and the light is fading.

 

The seedheads did look good in the golden sunlight, they are still there, and there were a few late flowers on the lupins having a second flush. Feeling a bit more in control of the square borders, I got a chance to work in the rose garden and found a Clematis cirrhosa ‘Freckles in full bloom.

December

Almost full circle and back to a very wintry looking garden and a late flowering rose. January will start with less cutting back and shrub shaping to do than last year so maybe a chance to divide some of the perennials and make the beds more of a mix. At the moment there are big blocks of colour which look effective but then all die back at once.

It goes without saying that I was easily distracted by the beautiful house and trying to get it in the pictures. There are also views over the surrounding countryside.

For wedding venue details and photos I would suggest the website, link in first paragraph, or the Instagram account @kentonhallestate.

Late January

The evenings are slowly getting lighter, and things are beginning to grow. January has felt like a month of gloom interspersed with high winds but there has been rain, sleet, snow and the odd spot of sun too.

The snowdrops are beginning to form drifts and I am eagerly awaiting my hellebores, still in bud! I shouldn’t wish my time away but I can’t wait for the tulips either. Still, a gardener’s work is never finished and this is about what I am doing at the moment.

One of my main tasks over winter is pruning roses and that is ongoing. I can’t bring myself to cut off the few brave flowers but on the whole I am quite brutal and the more grumpy I am, the harder I chop!

With tulips starting to show, hurrah, I am finishing off tidying the borders and doing the final cutting back of perennials. It is really cheering to see shoots emerging I do hope that they don’t get caught by the frosts as it is still quite early.

Tulips

Poppies

At the pub, rather appropriately, I have cut back the grape vines. I don’t know a lot about it except that you do it in January so that the stems don’t bleed. I have trimmed back mid season before and the sap does rather gush out. They seem to grow like mad so I have pruned to give a nice structure on the wire supports.

Grape vines before pruning. Note fallen tree in between shepherd’s huts.

At home, progress on the actual garden is slow but I have been thumbing through the seed catalogues trying to make a decision as to what to grow this year.

You would think that with this many seeds already I would have enough but I’ve found lots more that just have to order! Lots of salad leaves that I pick everyday for my sandwiches, leeks for soup, beans, courgettes and some giant pumpkin seeds from Matthew Oliver at RHS Hyde Hall so fingers crossed! I have to think about what I want to eat, what will sell on my stall (to cover some of the growing costs), and filling those large veg plots at the pub. There will be lots of flowers too.

I can’t wait for some warm spring sunshine, but I have got plenty to do to get the garden ready before the big seed sowing frenzy begins.

January veg, my first cauliflower!

New year, same old garden.

A wander around my own garden in early January to see if I can find signs of life. It has been seriously neglected for the winter and I mean that genuinely, I haven’t been out there, except to do the chickens and hang washing for a couple of months. I  have actually been enjoying the standing stalks but it is probably time to do some cutting back and give the new growth a chance. Because if you look hard enough, things are moving!

Lots of work to do!

Cheered by the sight of some hellebore buds I have managed to get a bit done in the front garden as it’s more on view, including planting the tulip bulbs, very late, into pots. I also found the first aconite in bud.

Hellebore – nearly there!

 

I have some violas in pots which I can see from the window. I know that I’ve said it before but I always concentrate my early spring flowers where I will walk past or can enjoy them from inside, because I am not going to linger when it’s murky and 4°C like today. The hellebores are next to the drive and every day when I see them will bring a little bit of gladness to my soul.

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Violas #smallthings

A post shared by Charlotte (@cjbee827) on Jan 8, 2018 at 2:48pm PST

 

Deeper into the mess, I can find primroses, from a friends garden so extra important, and a perennial candytuft, Iberis Sempervirens. It is just coming into bud and will carry on flowering for at least the next 3 months. It likes a well drained, open spot but really doesn’t need much care at all, a good doer as they say.

 

Just to prove that I wasn’t totally idle in the autumn, here are my broad beans, surviving perfectly well in the garden with no protection. That mesh you can see is an old fire guard to keep the birds off when I first planted them out. I had quite some battle with mice to get these to grow, I had to weigh down the propagator lid and make sure that there were no gaps. Fortunately I have a lot of saved seed.

 

In the polytunnel I have salad leaves and some overwintering bits and pieces too messy to show! One of the door zips is broken so the protection is not quite as good as it could be but it’s slightly warmer that outside especially if the sun shines. Also what’s left of the second sowing of broad beans.

 

Unable to wait for the weather to get warmer, I have just sown some salad bowl lettuce in pots on the windowsill indoors. Something to enjoy while I look through the seed catalogues and plan this year’s excitement.