Winter colour - Rubus cockburnianus

The powdery white stems of the immensely thorny Rubus cockburinanus really sing out vividly at this time of the year, contrasting dramatically with the still fresh green of the bamboo that stands next to them. With its dreadful suckering habit and vigorous root system, Rubus can be a big mistake if planted in the wrong place! It is worth growing for its winter stems if you can cope with having to dig out suckers when they venture too far and if you can put up with the lashing branches as you try to weed under it in summer!

A month ago, we donned the thickest gloves and, using long handled pruners, cut out all the old, dark stems - a tedious, scratchy job - but the reward is this lovely, clear, open framework where the stems crisscross like some natural trellis work. We took care not to rub off the white bloom that covers the red stems and makes them so visually interesting in early January.

There are buds in the snowdrops, flowers on the Mahonia x 'Charity' and sky blue flowers on the rosemary 'Tuscan Blue' in the greenhouse. The robins are happy when we rake up leaves and dart in and out quickly spotting the tiniest grubs. Some of the grasses are starting to shoot away at the base, the Miscanthus having thin pointed buds posied for takeoff, so things are already stirring in the garden.

Cutting back perennials

The walled garden was closed for this season last Friday and will re-open next March which means a bit of time off for us; there will be moments of quiet and contemplation rather like a seaside resort that has been shut up for winter. The weather has been lucky for the last few weeks with mostly dry days and this has really helped in getting the garden 'put to bed'. Perennials in the borders have been cut down, seeds have been saved in paper bags, roses pruned back and all the comfrey harvested for the third time this year for the compost heap. Despite the usual guidance in books to leave four inches on perennial stems to protect the plants in the winter, I cut most plants hard back to the ground so it is easier to rake up leaves; this has never resulted in anything being lost as all the plants I treat this way are completely hardy. What is left untouched is more borderline - the fabulous beds of Verbena bonariensis (see last posting) as well as anything with a particularly lovely winter outline such as sea holly. Teasels are left standing for the goldfinches to feast on.

We had several frosts last week, the hardest being on Wed/Thurs night and it resulted in a magical transformation for a few short hours. These photos show the effects. Especially beautiful was the Heuchera 'Amber Wave' which has been much admired all season, growing in a large terracotta pot by the blue entrance gate. I also really liked the contrast between the cold, northern ice crystals and the hot Indian colours of the pot marigolds - Calendula 'Orange King' which was Gertrude Jekylls's favourite (see posting for 24th August showing how we grew the calendula as a companion plant to the runner beans). I will of course carry on blogging through the cold months as last year so you can see what the garden looks like even when it is closed to visitors. And you can see my photographs of wildlife and landscape on the BBC Autumnwatch Flickr group too.

Really sharp hand shears!

At this time of the year there are so many jobs to do in the garden and I have discovered a really useful pair of single-handed hand shears that leave your left hand free to grab grass, long trails of clematis or whatever it is you are trying to cut back. They are also great for harvesting herbs such as this marjoram in the picture. Called Jakoti shears, they are imported by a family in Somerset, who were given a pair by a friend who bought them from a hardware shop on a Greek island. They found them to be so useful for all sorts of gardening jobs from topiary to lawn edging, that they bought them in to sell in Britain.

I like their bright red handles which are cheerful and not easily lost in some box hedge in the garden! They are also, very usefully, self-sharpening and we have now used them for some time in the walled garden and they are still as sharp as when we got them. They are also used for sheep shearing and you can see them in action on the website - www.handshears.co.uk - with a Greek farmer shearing his sheep in a video. It's a strangely lovely video to watch with the only sounds being the tinkling of sheep bells, the snip-snip of the shears and the occasional baa!

Reflections in February

After what has been quite a battering from gales and snow, the garden on this early February day, looks calm and poised for growth. Even the suface of the ponds is still, reflecting the sky which has patches of blue. I love this dwarf scots pine which has a very beautiful form, graceful and rounded in shape; in a previous summer gale two years ago, it leant at an angle and I was worried that it would be lost but it seems to have kept the balance of its roots. There are three ponds, one round, one rectangular and a small pool in the greenhouse for the frogs to cool off in summer. Ponds are the single most effective way of enticing a wide variety of wildlife to the garden. The pool by the scots pine has a wooden ramp to help frogs and toads to get out and to save a hedgehog should one fall in.


All the grasses were cut down last week to allow the new growth to emerge (and to tidy it up after the gales!). The grass garden is pretty much at ground level now, a great contrast to its nine feet of height by autumn. The long flower spikes have been cut out of the Stipa gigantea by sliding the secateurs deep down amongst the fine leaves and then we took a rake to them, combing out all the loose dead leaves and debris that collects in the mound of foliage. The effect is always much better and it's really worth doing.

We are propagating lots of plants for sale as the crowns start to shoot away; lungwort, geum, geranium, euphorbia, epilobium, London Pride, sweet violet among others. The wild garlic is looking fresh and green, and the pheasants like to nibble the young shoots. We are splitting wild garlic and potting up it ready for when the garden is open again; made popular by chefs such as Antonio Carluccio, it makes a delicious soup, salad leaf, addition to a potato curry or a casserole and the smell in the woodland when it is full out is quite magical.

Pruning the vine

The greenhouse is looking beautifully tidy now that much of the foliage has been cut back; plants trained against the white wall have been pruned before their leaves dropped to save on clearing up work! It was a delightfully scented job, cutting the lemon verbena right back to its main stems, the balm of gilead to ground level (how I love its aromatic, antiseptic smelling leaves), reducing passion flower to its snaking vine, keeping the myrtles within bounds. Of the plants left unpruned, the pineapple sage is spared so that we can enjoy its vivid red flowers in deep winter - see blog photo from last winter.

A major job each year is pruning the huge grapevine which runs all the length of the greenhouse. There are always so many grapes that I let a home winemaker take them away. There's a photo of them on this interesting and constantly updated blog by Di Overton - designersblock.blogspot.com - along with others of the walled garden that she took this July. I usually do the pruning myself but this autumn I was helped by my Spanish friend Francisco who grew up on a vineyard near Valencia. It's wonderful to watch him confidently wielding the secateurs as he conducts a running commentary on what he is doing and the various Spanish words for different types of pruning cut, as many as Eskimo words for snow! There are 'cascales' the weaker, less promising side branches and 'munyones' the congested lumps of previous cuts - all ruthlessly pruned back to the main branches. The result is clean lines, regular spacing of the strongest spurs and a rather more vigorous pruning than I would have achieved.

Beautiful autumn garden, cutting back herbs and perennials

It's been three weeks since my last blog posting because there is so much work to do in the garden at this time of the year. Although many people think of spring as the start of the season, to many professional gardeners, this is the beginning of the yearly cycle; it is now that plans for next year are laid, borders are dug and prepared whilst visualising the spring, plants are moved around and everything is done with the mind's eye on how it will look when the foliage re-emerges. We have been furiously cutting back and sorting out, putting the garden 'to bed' for the winter. Some plants are left standing - eryngiums so that frost can pick out their spiky shapes, teasels for flocks of goldfinches to feast on, Verbena bonariensis to protect it should the winter be hard, peonies until the leaves have turned completely brown and the goodness has gone back down into the tubers.

There are many beautiful moments; the sun slowly breaking through the mist behind the large white daisies of Chrysanthemum uliginosum (picture above), a sudden flurry of long tailed tits tumbling aerobatically through the magnolia, the sharp eyed, sad voiced, robin snatching tiny grubs from by my feet, scintillating drops of water on the drooping, golden heads of Stipa gigantea. The visitors who come at this time of the year tend to be gardeners themselves, without unreal expectations of an autumn garden, people who appreciate the quiet moments and the walled garden's atmosphere. One visitor fell asleep on a sunny bench in the afternoon, another wrote in the visitor's book 'died and gone to heaven'.

Some plants have already been cut back before; geraniums which were sheared after flowering and ladies mantle which was cut right back to its rough, brown crown in summer had put on beautiful, pristine leaves outlined in dewdrops. We now cut these back again so all the foliage can go on the compost heap. Many herbs are vigorously cut back; marjoram (I dont want thousands of marjoram seedlings everywhere!), chives, fennel, valerian, vervain, soapwort, all the herbaceous herbs leaving just the shrubby plants. Some early flowering lavenders were clipped over when their purple tops had faded, late flowering lavender being left til the spring.

We have now had a few nights of frost; the dahlias, runner beans and sweet peas have been hit and leaves are drifting off the trees. I am glad that this accelerates the dying back, so that the underlying structure of the garden is revealed once more, a necessary and welcome part of the cyclical rhythm of the walled garden.

Roman herbs & astilbes

The acanthus in the Roman garden looks wonderfully sculptural at this time of the year; hardly surprising then, that its leaves were the inspiration for the capitals on Corinthian columns. The tall flower heads are really very prickly, but the flowers dry well, keeping their colour without collapsing which can be unusual for white petals. Any that hang over the path get cut and put in the shop for flower arrangers to buy fresh or dried. The Roman garden is divided into four beds; two of culinary herbs, one of medicinal and one of sacred herbs, and it is in this last bed that the Acanthus is planted. Next to it is a large bush of myrtle, a plant long associated with love, sprigs of which are put into wedding bouquets. (Queen Victoria had myrtle in hers) Its young leaves when squeezed smell of bubble gum!

Also in the sacred herb bed is vervain which was dedicated to goddesses, firstly to Isis and then to Venus. Roman women would make small garlands of vervain (and also violets and lavender, both in our Roman garden) to lay on the household altar. We know it was used in Britain thanks to archaeological evidence - pollen grains were found during digs at Roman Silchester in Berkshire.

There is plenty I could write about our Roman garden and I'll concentrate on cooking herbs in a future blog. For now, let me show a picture of how the astilbe border looks right now. As the walled garden is south facing and free draining, the only place to put damp-loving plants is in the shade of the bottom wall. In a normal summer when the rest of the garden gets hot and dry, the astilbes can revel in the moist soil down there, alongside some of the hostas, but lack of rain has not exactly been a problem this year! The astilbes self-seed happily and I love their various shades of pink, from candyfloss to deep salmon mixed in with some whites. There was goats beard in this border just before the astilbes came into flower - Aruncus silvester - a lovely white fluffy effect, but I have cut all the flower stalks out now because when over they go a sad shade of brown. Early August is a time of massive cutting back all over the garden, to allow fresh foliage to come through and to stop too much self-seeding; some is wonderful and looks natural, too much can be too much - it's a careful juggling act!