Veg Plotting

It's been almost impossible to go out for a walk lately and not get bonked on the head by a falling acorn or beech nut. The paths through the woods are strewn with the trees' bounty, far too much for the squirrels to hide away as is their usual wont. I'm sure they're as busy as they usually are; they just can't keep up with what's available. I was reminded recently of the term mast year , which describes exactly what we're experiencing this autumn. My reasoning on why this is happening is: We had a mild, wet winter so the trees had a good drink and had plenty of opportunity to prime themselves ready for spring without snow, frost and ice getting in the way Blossom came early, and for once it wasn't blown away by a winter storm or loosened by a frost It was a warm spring so the bees and other pollinators maximised their activities in the sunshine They were so efficient that even the later spring and early summer drought wasn't sufficient to bring frui...

This is a new addition to one of the local routes I walk on a regular basis. There are more questions than its presence answers... if it ever gets used I think we'll know about it! Update: I bumped into the owner on my walk the other day, a quite young chap who was loading it onto a trailer. He admitted it was 'a random purchase' made under lockdown as a project for him to get it into working order again. He was taking it to a friend's field to test it out, after all as he said, 'I'm not taking it onto the water until I know it doesn't leak'. Then it's off to winter storage, so this particular walk is set to look more normal again. Just replacing the skirt cost him £1,000 and by a strange coincidence one of my friends told me her dad used to make them when he worked for Avon tyres in Melksham.  What discoveries have you made out walking this year?

October days are rather special at Exbury Gardens , not only for autumn colour, but also for their amazing collection of nerines . You may remember I visited last spring for their centenary year ; it's always good to return in a different season to see what a garden has to offer. A gorgeously sunny day last week and the trees nearing their peak autumn colour meant it didn't disappoint. Before we have a proper wander around the garden, The Five Arrows Gallery is the place to be with its special exhibition of Exbury's nerines. These are the stars of the collection this year and includes a selection of the new hybrids picked out by garden director Nicholas de Rothschild and Theo Herselman, who heads up the Nerine and Lachenalia collections. There are also plants to buy here, some of them available for the first time. They are that new. Here's Theo just after this year's exhibition opened, photo courtesy of Chris Stephens of Otso Creative. I bumped into Theo at the glas...

Helianthus 'Lemon Queen' is a late summer stalwart on my patio. I have a longish narrow bed in the corner, dominated by a fig tree and with a couple of winter flowering clematis growing up our neighbour's garage wall. This is a perennial sunflower, which grows to 5 or 6 feet tall, with lighter yellow flowers than most of its perennial and annual cousins. Personally, I think the lighter lemon suits the softer rays of autumn's sunshine. This area doesn't have a decent depth of soil, which is fine for the fig, but at the height of summer my sunflowers suffer a little. As a consequence this is the only garden bed which gets an additional watering, usually the waste water from our kitchen. I now have a couple of options to consider: either to build up the soil depth with a thick mulch so my sunflowers fare better, or to replace them with something else. Earlier in the year I was all for replacing them with raspberries as part of my Allotment at Home endeavours as th...

Two years ago we visited Rufford Old Hall whilst on holiday in Lancashire. I spotted they had a Mindfulness Walk leaflet at the entrance and when NAH said he needed his post lunch nap, I decided to try it. I found it most calming and since then I've adapted it for my own garden. I've found it a useful way to start the day, even when it's raining and seeing today is World Mental Health Day , I thought you might like to see it too. Note, I'm not a mental health expert, nor a trained practitioner in any way, but if the following helps just one person, then I'm happy it's done some good. I've deliberately created some cards rather than using photos of my own garden to help make it suitable for any time of the year and I hope that'll make it easier for you to adapt too. Feel free to choose a different order to the one shown for your own circumstances, and/or omit any steps that don't 'speak' to you, though I recommend doing the Breathe part as a...

  I had a glorious afternoon at Chenies Manor House  last week and here's a view of the delicious Grade I listed property from the gardens to show off its setting. Those twisted chimneys tell us it dates back to Tudor times and I later found out their maker went on to build the famous ones at Hampton Court. The place has a 'settled in' feel about it which sits perfectly at home with its surroundings and village, probably because there's been a manor house there since Anglo Saxon times, if not earlier. It makes for a relaxing place to explore. The garden's planting is structural yet romantic and divided into several 'rooms'. It's noted for its dahlias at this time of the year and they were opulent and delightful. Another strong feature were the sculptures which added a contemporary note to the Tudor influenced design. I feel I've been following a particular sculptor around the past few weeks - Jenny Pickford -  the creator of the floral sculpture you...

I've made no secret of my love of apples and it gladdens my heart to see it's the best year ever for my crop here at VP Gardens . Despite giving up my ten trees up at the allotment, two out of the three I have here have outdone themselves this year. Blossom time coincided with April's warm weather and the sound of happy bees droning through the flowers led to pretty much 100% pollination. Even with the drastic June Drop I showed you during the dry months of early summer, the branches of my 'Herefordshire Russet' and 'Red Windsor' are groaning downwards with fruit. I've been harvesting them since late August and we still have hundreds of apples to go. Freezer space has been cleared so I can load it up with chopped, cooked apples to go with my winter porridge. This takes care of the damaged fruit and soon I'll wrap the perfect specimens for storage. Of all the crops in my garden, apples are proving to be well worth their space in terms of both beaut...

It's taken me a long time to appreciate pelargoniums. I have a childhood memory of them overwintering in a corridor at my primary school and hating the overpowering smell of their brown, shrivelled stems in that narrow space. Those were zonal pelargoniums, and since then I've slowly started to appreciate the scented leaf varieties. You can read more about the different types here . Georgie included a lovely lemony scented variety in my final Flowers for Mum last year and I took a few cuttings so I could grow something new in her memory. They looked so weak and feeble over winter I almost gave up and consigned them to the compost heap, but as you can see one survived and it's filled out its given pot admirably over the summer. Now I knew from my schooldays I was going to have to give my plant some drastic treatment soon, and I'm glad I saw a tweet from Fibrex Nurseries a couple of days ago to remind everyone it's time to bring their plants in as the weather has coo...

I had a marvellous hour with Eli on Saturday at her Wiltshire Ceramics Studio in Foxham where we had a play with rolled clay and cutting out shapes then adding coloured glaze ready for firing. Eli took on the studio the weekend just before Lockdown began (timing!) and she was only able to start offering taster sessions like the one on Saturday recently. As you can see we masked up for the occasion, everything was sparkling clean in the studio, and I was offered fresh clay to work with. She also supplies clean aprons, but I was pleased I'd taken my own as it'll save her some work afterwards.  Eli hails from the States and her bubbly personality is full of enthusiasm for her craft. She encouraged me to try all aspects of the process, from cutting the clay to work with from the large block, bashing it down with a large rolling pin before using the the large roller to produce the final flattened piece of clay. I then transferred it to a board, gently smoothed it out with a scraper...

Monty Don in Phoenix, Arizona; Lotusland, California; and Monty in Central Park, New York. © Derry Moore.  What is an American Garden? asks Monty Don in the introduction to this lavish volume. The images above give us a clue to his unsurprising conclusion: America is simply too vast. The varied landscapes, climate, and people are too mind bogglingly wide to provide a definitive answer.  Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC. © Derry Moore That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to find out and I'm pleased Monty Don did in both his TV series in January, and now in the follow-up book published earlier this week. I was due to visit America again for the latest Garden Bloggers' Fling , but of course Covid-19 put those plans on hold. It's great to do that from my armchair instead, especially as one of the gardens featured - The Lurie in Chicago - is one I was due to visit on my way to Wisconsin. Another garden - Dumbarton Oaks - was closed when I visited Washington DC in 2017, so I...