WINTER APPROACHES

 Almost December and the weather has turned bitterly cold over this weekend. You can tell it's going to be winter later this week.

We have three Mahonia's in the garden, this is the one at the front , near the front door, they are all full of beautiful yellow flowers and have been for months.

The other two are in the back garden, one in the house garden and the last one right up the back after the lychgate.

There are still a couple of Fuchsia's out the front too.

The newly replanted flower bed, in the flower garden is looking fine.

We have cut back the Akeba that was covering this area to allow some like to get into the plants which to was starting to cover.

So it will be allowed to regrow.

You can just see the third Mahonia on the right also large and full of flowers, which are good for single bees and the berry that come after help to feed the birds in the winter.

The banana's are wrapped and the greenhouse full.

The end border by the new fence is doing well.

We used the cutting from the roses after they were put through the shredder as a mulch.

The Magnolia on the left of the pot has lots of buds.

Paul's made a leaf compost bin, so we will have some lovely leaf mulch in a year . Leaves are still dropping, so there is room for more.

Still some work to do before it gets too cold to be out and about in the garden.

AUTUMN CHANGES

 Now we are in Autumn and heading towards winter, Paul has been cutting back and removing shrubs in the front garden, which have been left to become overgrown and were taking up large parts of the gravelled area.

The fence was hidden behind all the shrubs that had taken over even coming two foot or more over the gravel. So that have been cut right back and some will be removed and this will give a chance to have a change around.

He's also been working in the flower garden at the back, removing a very large Honeysuckle bush and an evergreen Clematis.

We had cut it back to the ground years ago meaning to remove it , did not get round to it and it then regrew and filled the corner on the right to over flowing , the evergreen Clematis we put in it's place just then got tangled up in the honeysuckle .

Before photo from the summer showing the honeysuckle on the right.

and now ! This time the roots have been removed .

We have planted a Magnolia in the corner which has very large flowers and will make a lovely backdrop to the perennials.

Paul's also cut back the rose that was next to the archway and tied in some stems along the trellis , so hopefully we will have lots of lovely roses along there next year.

The rest of the bed needs digging over and a Rudbeckia that's taken over the space removed back to a small area and then we can replant with some of the plants we have recently bought on our garden and nursery trips.

From the house side it's opened up the space allowing some more light in for the winter months.

Now the field maple in the folly is changing colour it's easy to spot from the house.

It sits inside the folly helping to provide some shade in the summer months and beautiful colour as now in the autumn.

even the leaves laying on the floor of the folly look good !

Inside the folly.

 So even though our two garden recycling bins were only emptied this morning they are both almost full again .

So mush to do before the weather gets too cold or wet.

A TRIP TO THE GARDEN CENTRES

 

We have now planted a Magnolia on the left , Leonard Messel a pale pink.and have moved one of the Hydrangea's along plus we have also planted some low growing Geraniums.

We also planted this lovely Hydrangea Wim's red at the far end of the bed.

We have placed the mirror at the side of the compost bin so it reflects the raised bed as if it continues .

We have also planted some Cyclamen between the shrubs.

So all that is needed is a couple of climbing roses and some trellis for the top of the fencing.

A close up of the green man plaque now on the fence post. We have a few around the garden which we have bought over the years.

This large one is on the workshop.

So is this one

This one is metal and his nose works has a door knocker , so he is on the back doors of the workshop.

THE WORK ON THE NEW RAISED BED COMMENCES

 Well we could not rest on our laurels but had to continue working on the raised bed along the new fence at the end of the garden.

We started with working out where we would place the shrubs we already had, that were sitting around in pots.

Then we had to empty all three compost bins take them apart and move them back near to the new fence and along to the left. The bins were full ! Lots of lovely rich compost in two of them, so some of this we had to bag up until we can spread it on the garden in late autumn when the plants have died back.

By moving the compost bins to the left be gained this piece of border to add to the raised bed.

Once it was cleared I built an extension to the existing wall. It was then filled with compost.

We decided to move the compost bins along as well as back because the end of the right hand side bin was slightly past the folly wall, so was in view when you can towards the area from the crossways.

This area , so we decided that on the raised bed facing this walkway, we would place a paving slab and add a feature pot or statue. 

So we have for the moment moved the large terracotta urn from the house garden to here, to see if it suits.

So here is the area now with the pot in place and the compost bins moved over, which will mean we can have a nice shrub between the bins and the pot. We tried the piece of old mirror behind the pot but it does not work as we'd hope , you can still see yourself walking towards it. But we have another plan for the mirror now.

From further back where you can see me in the mirror but you can also not see side of the compost bin and once a nice shrub/plant is in that area it will look even better.

So the mirror will have a different place to be sited.

The five nice sized shrubs we already owned are now in , so can get some roots down before winter arrives. Paul took some cuttings of some shrub style ? one of which we will plant down by the pot on it's right and another in the gap shown on the right above.

We will also add some trailing plants along the front edge for some spring and summer colour. Plus a couple of climbing roses and clematis along the back of the fence.

Looking back from the compost bins towards the gate, still some more clearing up to do but much better than a few weeks back.

So it's slowly coming together.

IT'S FINISHED !!

 At last all the fencing panels are in place and that part of the work is now finished !

So we have gone from this ... to..

This !

towards back gate and greenhouse

From greenhouse back towards compost bins and workshop. The fencing appears higher because we live on a hill and our neighbours ground level is level with the new fencing. We have a raised bed which you can see in front of it. Before , our neighbours hedge would grow across most of the bed and we just had it full of Epimedium , a pretty spring ground cover plant, in order that when we had time we could cut it back. 

Now we will be digging in some of our homemade compost and planting this bed up with flowering shrubs , like Hydrangea's while leaving some paving slabs place between for some plant pots of summer colour.

We also want to move the compost bins back and slightly more towards the workshop, which will free up more space at that end.

So Paul's cut back and removed 100 foot of branches and replaced it with 100 ft of fence panels and posts and now we won't have to keep cutting back someone else hedge as we get older. Luckily we are very good friends with these neighbours and they have asked Paul to use his chainsaw to reduce the hedge on their side by two foot or more , which means we will be even more light into that part of the garden.

We even have some plants just waiting for a spot in the garden, some friends recently came to lunch and gave us a lovely white Hydrangea called Lime Light plus we have one we put in a pot because it was not happy in the space it was in.

Lime Light is in the green trug with the other beside in the grey pot.

Also this beautiful dark leafed on which has purple flowers be bought back in June when buying one for our youngest daughter, so it can also go into the new bed.

Along with this pink one that's been in a pot for a few years. So we won't need to spend much to get the new shrub bed up and running.

So now is the time to get these plants in so they will have the coming winter to get those roots nice and strong for next year.