As we move into winter, there isn’t a lot to do in the garden; so this blog is basically a summary of what has happened in our garden this growing year. 

It has been an incredible year of gardening, with more home-grown fruit & veg than ever, but a sad loss of our beautiful willow tree that has stood there since I can remember.

Our Garden Harvest

It has been a successful year of growing fruit, veg & herbs and though some things didn’t do very well – like the melons – the tomatoes were incredible, with all 4 tomato plants providing us with fruit. Weirdly our ‘never fail’ crop, peas, weren’t that great, similarly, the cucumber plants only gave us 1 decent sized cucumber. But the spuds were pretty decent, as were the courgettes.

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One of my fav jobs over the summer was to nip up to the garden in a morning and pick raspberries & blueberries for breakfast, which we ate with Greek yogurt and honey – that was just delish.

And the apples, oh the apples, they were heavenly!

Another success story this year was the broad beans, this was the first time we have planted them and they gave us lots of perfect pods. The star prize though, has to go to the purple sprouting broccoli. That was just win win for us eating it and the bees, who were buzzin’ for their yellow flowers when we left it to go to seed.

Saving rainwater in a changing climate

As we move into a changing climate, we all need to prepare for what is to come and a water butt is a good idea to help save precious rainwater. We finished installing ours this year; it collects the rainwater directly from the gutters, then I use it for watering my carnivorous plants. We’ve also started to store water in a water tank that my Dad took out of a house.

Though I have to say, we’ve had that much rain lately, we could have filled a reservoir, never mind a water butt!

Pond

The next blog I write will be about the wildlife highlights of 2019 and the pond will defo feature in that – it’s by far the best thing we’ve done in the garden. Besides the wildlife, the pond lily, arrowhead, flag iris, marsh marigold, greater spearwort have absolutely thrived and created the most diverse wildlife habitat.

Watch this space as me and Dad get carried away, erm I mean, as we extend the pond next year!

Flowers, shrubs & trees

We’ve reaped the rewards of planting lots of pollinating plants, as it’s been a pure joy watching all the bees & butterflies visiting the garden and feasting on them.  The lemon thyme, in fact all the thymes have been outstanding. We moved the kniphofia lemon popsicle and that’s absolutely thriving now and the mahonia is looking particularly stunning right now.

We’ve continued working on the front garden, where we’ve planted an honesty plant and allium bulbs and a neighbour asked for a cutting of our lamb’s ear, as she loved the colour.

My carnivorous plants are still growing well, though a couple were a bit greedy over the summer, eating so many flies that they got indigestion!

planting wildflower seeds

harvesting honesty seeds

darling dahlias

allium

geums

pond lily

red hot poker

Magnolia in bloom – March 2019

composting

watering my CP plants

As I said earlier, we said goodbye to our willow tree this year, (it had perished the year before) but we actually dug the roots out, where they revealed an intriguing twist to the tree’s final demise. Thanks to my ‘virtual friends’ on Twitter we were able to determine that the larvae of the lunar hornet moth had burrowed through the trunk. It looks weird without it hanging over the pond, but I suppose we’re left with a new opportunity to grow something else there now. The willow lives on up in the top garden, surrounded by other logs, as it provides a home for invertebrates, mini beasts and birds foraging upon it.

So how’s your garden grown this year. Do leave me a comment below, it means a lot.

I’ll leave you with my fav short clip, which I posted on Twitter in the summer, it’s mint!