I've been outside this week tidying up the gardens a little, sweeping up leaves and pulling up all the old annuals etc to start filling one of our new composter bays.
Despite the time of year, the garden's not looking too bad at all - we've plenty of evergreens that provide year-round interest - so I took a few photos and thought I'd join in again with the Six-on-Saturday brigade hosted by The Propagator.
1. The parallel hedges to the west
In winter, when the deciduous hedge has lost its leaves, you can better see the extent of the growth on the parallel evergreen Cotoneaster Lacteus hedge planted in June 2017.
This is intended to be an eight-foot high privacy screen and windbreak. It's never been trimmed but probably now needs a slight haircut in the very early spring.
The hornbeams in the mixed native hedge behind tend to hold onto their browned leaves well into the winter, and maybe even until we get strong winds in the early spring.
In the foreground is the evergreen New Zealand Holly (Olearia macrodonta) which has now established itself very well.
And on the cotoneasters, these are the very first berries we've had but they're only present in a few locations along the length of the hedge. Hopefully, next year there'll be many more summer flowers (white) and winter berries.
2. Rear hedge at the south
First planted in March 2015, this hedge is comprised of alternate plantings of Portugal Laurel and Photinia Red Robin, and has grown into a decent evergreen screen. It could probably do with a good trim, and maybe even reducing in height by half-a-metre or so, but again we'll leave that job until the spring.
At the far right-hand side next to the small shed, there's also a bamboo in the corner which we've always worked around when building the shed and doing any landscaping works etc.
Apart from the mature trees within the boundaries at the south and north-west of the garden, this bamboo is one of only three remaining plants from the time we moved in here, the others being the apple tree and a climbing hydrangea.
Panning left from the photo above brings us to the south-east corner of the garden, which is dominated by a tall Lawson's Cypress tree (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana).
Originally, we'd planted an additional Photinia behind the Cypress to extend the rear hedge nearer to the corner with the neighbour's fence, but this particular plant didn't grow well at all. It was just too close to the tree which, in addition to acting as a huge umbrella that shelters the area in all but the very heaviest rain, sucks up all the moisture that does manage to reach the ground. It was also quite dark under the shade of the tree, even though we'd previously cut off the very lowest branches to let more light in.
So earlier in the year, we lifted the skirts of the tree even higher, removing all branches for a height of around 4 metres from the ground, and then built a raised bed directly behind the base of the trunk using thick timbers. The new bed can just be seen below behind the water feature.
This bed is around 1.5 m long and was filled with a mixture of topsoil and compost, into which we planted five Pyracantha 'Teton' shrubs to fill the gap, quite large (and expensive !) specimens at around 1.2 m tall but we wanted a fairly immediate barrier.
We used a weed control fabric under a pebble mulch to try and retain more moisture in the bed. The Pyracanthas were kept well watered this summer, and we can see from new growth that they are slowly settling in, but they'll need another couple of years of TLC for them to knit together and make a dense screen.
3. Camellias
We've two camellia bushes in half-barrel planters. The first at the rear is always the healthiest looking plant in the garden, no pest damage and high-gloss leaves. It's well shaded and also sheltered from the strong winds, producing pale pink flowers in late spring.
The second camellia is in an identical planter at the front, and always seem to look a bit moth-eaten - it's much more exposed to strong westerly winds but produces a load of white flowers much earlier than the pink ones at the back.
The front bed and borders look a little bare and forlorn at this time of year.
3. Rhododendrons
We've four rhododendrons and a dwarf azalea in the back garden, all in containers - we don't have the soil conditions to plant them out in the ground - but like the camellias they seem to thrive in the ericaceous mix in the planters.
The rhododendron varieties are Golden Torch, Dietrich, Rasputin plus an 'unbranded' specimen in the foreground bought from Aldi.
They're all forming fat flower buds for what will hopefully be another spectacular display next May / June.
4. Other evergreens
We've several evergreens in the side gravel bed, various conifers and a spotted laurel.
And the heating oil tank at the back of the bed as shown below is covered in a tangled mass of seven varieties of honeysuckles, most of which tend to hold onto their leaves year-round although we've never had a really bad winter in the nine years since we've been here.
On the paving in front of the large shed, we've two Lorepetalum Chinense 'Fire Dance' shrubs in large planters.
Although they can survive here, they're not fully hardy at our latitude and I really must cover them with fleece before the extreme cold weather sets in, otherwise they can suffer quite badly from frostbite at the growing tips.
At the front of the garden, to the west side of the gate, there's the high and dense Cherry Laurel hedge we planted in 2011. This was before we bought the extra strip of land to extend the garden, so it's only a few metres long and continues as a hawthorn hedge behind the greenhouse and up to the new western boundary, although we've also planted a few Pyracantha in front of the hawthorns, again using the evergreens to provide a degree of winter privacy screening.
And just for comparison, here's the same laurel hedge just after planting, in a photo from eight years ago - the old MGF is long gone ...
Finally on the evergreen front, we've a couple of dozen Monkey Puzzle (Araucaria Araucana) saplings in pots. In late 2017, I bought around 100 fresh seeds from a grower in Scotland, supposedly soon after they'd fallen from the tree, and they all went straight into the fridge.
More than half of them germinated from several sowings made at different times in 2018. I sold some of them on Gumtree earlier this year, and I'll probably do the same next spring - we only want to keep one or two specimens for ourselves.
5. Palms & 'exotics'
On the rear patio area, we've a Trachycarpus Fortunei and a Trachycarpus Wagnerianus in containers. These were both bought as much smaller plants, and they've come on very well, having been potted-on a few times.
We've also a few Spanish daggers (Yucca Gloriosa), one revived specimen in the ground in the side gravel bed, one in a large pot and others in smaller pots.
6. Elsewhere in the garden
There are several plants in pots that were moved into the large greenhouse before the first frosts, including two Washington Filifera and two small Trachycarpus Wagnerianus, all grown from seeds sown many years ago. The 'waggies' seem to be taking a very long time to get established.
Also in there are two young tropical Paubrasilia Echinata trees, grown from seed which we picked up from the ground at a botanical garden in the Canary Islands, although I've no idea what their longer-term future will be in our garden - we certainly don't have sub-tropical conditions here ...
The garlic (Music Porcelain) is outside on a table, and beginning to come through, although we've probably lost a few of the 25 cloves sown in late October as a result of the birds and squirrels digging around in the pots.
And we've just bought a 500 mm long thermometer for the composter. Needless to say, there's not much biological activity going on in there as yet.
So that completes the round-up of the garden in winter. It turned into a longer post than I'd intended !
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