Days of glorious sunshine and hard frosts at night (down to about -2 at the beginning of the week) have seen us in the garden every afternoon.
The BV is still not working since March this year, but he’s beavering away to make garden life nicer, so my first of six is about his current project.
1 Area around the garden shed.
Almost everywhere in this garden slopes, has a wall with medieval foundations, or a base of more recent concrete. Challenges to overcome. The BV has been working to make the area around our shed ‘habitable’. This involves a lot of shifting of stones.
And bottles that were cemented to the wall that drops down to the cut flower garden.
A good idea in theory, but a damn nuisance 20 (??) years later. At least the BV didn’t decide to replace the old effort with the newer results of his beer drinking!
The project also involves a new wooden pergola purchased only last Friday. It will hold up Rose ‘Ethel’ and the branches of her elder host. This is the gap where the pergola will go – it gives a fine view over the bottom (orchard and wild area) part of the garden. I’m thinking comfortable seats in shade …
2 The vegetable plot. I decided to mulch the three bottom beds with herbaceous clippings from the Long Border this year.
I do have three compost bins, but in such a large garden there’s never enough space for my autumn/winter tidy-up.
During the summer I accidentally (lazily!) left lavender and hyssop clippings in place on the ground for several weeks and when I came to lift them the top was intact but there was a lovely damp, crumbly layer beneath – in the midst of a heat wave. If I can swing it, might even buy in some compost/soil improver in the spring, spread it over the green waste and then plant young seedlings (pumpkins, sweet corn, brassicas) directly, without digging into the soil, which will hopefully remain nice and damp below, encouraging our worm population. I’ll need to add an organic fertiliser to replace some of the nitrogen loss caused by the bacteria that will rot down the green matter.
3 Pumpkin harvest has been great – too good for two people.
In 2020 they lasted until March, and I hope that when lockdown is over in mid December I’ll be able to see a few friends and give them a surprise Christmas present.
4 The vegetable plot. March Picker asked for pictures of my pathetic Brussel sprouts. I’m not brave enough, but we do have some rather nice kale, leeks, and rhubarb chard (try steaming the latter and then quickly whizzing it up with sesame seed oil in a dry pan – delicious!)
5 The winter colour starts to appear.
My coloured-stemmed dogwoods look like a green backdrop to the Long Border in summer. But they are starting to come into their own now. The ground underneath (a sloping – surprise, surprise! – bank down to the flat part of the border) is clothed with hellebores and comfrey, all planted by me about 5 years ago and now taking off and spreading.
6 Helleborus niger. I have a few plants in the open ground that continually get black-spotted leaves and pathetic stems.
I’ve removed leaves, mulched with gravel, and so on, but nothing seems to help. Finally, about two years ago, I moved two plants to pots that are over-wintered in the greenhouse. Now that they are flowering, I can see that the main problem is that the varieties I’m growing flower too close to the ground. The black spot still occurs …
Must seek out some longer-stemmed cultivars. A friend in the village gave me a wonderful bunch for my December birthday a few years ago. Should have a word with him …
Meanwhile – have a wonderful week and spend at least some of it checking out the other Six on Saturday offerings you’ll find on The Propagator’s blog.
Garden Dreaming at Châtillon 
We have always tended towards removing dead herbaceous material and putting it on the compost bin but your spreading it on the beds reminds me that in a nearby garden, Mount Congreve, they cut down their asters and phlox at the end of the year and use them to cover the dahlias, after they have been cut down. They grow a lot of dahlias and lifting all the tubers would be a huge job so they leave most in the ground and lift a few from each clump. These are then brought into growth, on heat, early in the new year and they propagate new plants from cuttings. If the tubers in the ground have been killed by frost, they will have replacements to hand and, if not, they have plants to sell. Apparently, plants propagated from cuttings have better vigour.
Your garden looks lovely at this time of year, particularly the dogwoods. I love the mossy roof.
Good luck with your garden project. The pergola sounds lovely.
I have not yet removed the helleborus leaves but I don’t have any flowering buds. Still a little patience.
Very nice photos with autumn-winter colours !
Wonderful photos, everything looks lovely in the frost. I do like the dogwood stems, really superb for winter. Jealous of that pumpkin harvest, I absolutely love pumpkin soup and/or butternut soup, try topping some with your pan-fried chard, delicious.
Hi Cathy, some difficulties to translate :
– BV. ???
– could you tell more about these stones. Traces of a médiéval garden ? Slope garden at this time ?
Enjoy jour 52 weeks flowering garden.
Thanks you for these post.
Hugues
Le sam. 28 nov. 2020 à 09:47, Garden Dreaming at Châtillon a écrit :
> Cathy posted: ” Days of glorious sunshine and hard frosts at night (down > to about -2 at the beginning of the week) have seen us in the garden every > afternoon. We need a chainsaw – there’s a fallen ash under here! The BV is > still not working since March this year, ” >
Beautiful photos. You’ve had a much heavier frost than me. The roof is looking good, too.
Your frosts are beautiful. Like here, but we haven’t had the sunshine this week. (And snow is forecast!) I am completely ignorant about soil and compost but it sounds interesting what you plan to do. My hellebore leaves are surprisingly healthy this year, so I have only cut back enough to show off the flowers. The dogwoods also look good with their red stems showing up well in the frosty landscape.
What a wonderful garden you have, lots of work I’m sure, but it will all be worth it in the end. Lovely.
A fine six, Cathy. I love the thought of having a clipped rosemary hedge (impossible in my climate)… trimming it must be aromatic! I can just imagine you under the pergola 🙂 shade is so welcome on a hot day.
Thank you for you garden tour there is so much to admire. I find garden renovations and creations as interesting as the plants.
I’m a great advocate of mulch, all my vegetable and garden beds have a winter blanket both to improve the soil condition and stop the wind from stealing my soil. I use, shredded hedge clippings, seaweed, and strawy manure. By the end of the winter most of it has decomposed to leave a lovely crumbly mix. No need to dig it in, let the worms do the work. I do not cut down my herbaceous plants, the dead stems provide homes for invertebrates, and they also create their own mulch!
Oh my goodness Catherine, your garden is so beautiful. I can see there is so much to do but how exciting it must be to have so much loveliness and potential. I’d love to see a picture of the pergola when you get it in place. I have one in the garden to hold up a Himalayan musk rose which then scrambles 15 metres into a larch tree. It’s so pretty. Have a great week.
What an interesting post, Cathy – I really enjoyed reading it. H niger seems to be generally less accommodating than the H orientalis – I have lost a few of the latter. My orientalis will usually get some marked leaves, but not till late in the year and I shall start removing them in the next few weeks, a practice I only started a few years ago, but the flowers do look so much better for it
Lovely photos of your beautiful winter garden Cathy.
Such old features must be nice. That is something that this regions lacks.
Lindas as imagens.
Beautiful!
janicce.