November 2011

October’s mild weather has kept the curtain from falling on the garden’s spectacular show, and so late summer colour continues and shall have its final bow amongst the littering spectrum of warm autumn tones. Very little insect life aside from a few bumblebees stay on and gather extra fodder, most have coiled and tucked their proboscis under a wing for winter, and so my attention is in the air, with the rooks gaggling across the blanket sky and the starlings holding conference in the bare ash trees, winter is sure, but in the borders Dahlia ‘David Howard’ glows, Salvia ‘Indigo Spires’ looks even more intense in the dim blue light and Nicotiana mutabilis is enjoying a second wind, these last drops we savour the favour of, soon the tonic will be paler.

All this has enabled us to make headway on other jobs, before all hands are occupied housing away the tender material, we have partially emptied and dug over the sites of two exciting new planting projects, the first is in the Blue Garden in the triangular bed which runs back towards the skeleton Malus floribunda, and the second is the entire Orchard Garden which we are dubbing: Vietnam, 6 tons of processed bark have already been incorporated into the soil there, this will be a garden for exotic foliage, magnolias, daphnes and ferns.

The day after the garden closed we cleared away the pot displays. Similarly to when we are cutting the meadows, the progress of this job increases the quantity of space in the garden, new viewpoints are delightful and the bones of the hard landscaping become more apparent. The garden becomes more restful, it is an opportunity to feel the body of the place, and dream of dressing it up again next year.