Well happy Saturday one and all. Me and my partner went out last night for the first time since the youngest was born and it was a surprise to come out and see the cars frozen at 11pm, winter is now finally here and as I sit down writing this, it’s getting lighter outside and the normal brown tiles on the surrounding houses are white and shining from the frost, kinda wishing I had put my Salvias in the garage last night. The week has been good! Spent a wonderful afternoon at the GMG awards this week and many congratulations to Jack Wallington for winning the blogger of the year, very well deserved!
This weeks six things happening in the gardens this Saturday again mainly comes from my clients gardens once more. Mine is getting slightly neglected at the moment, have still got a few bulbs to plant and also the materials ordered up for playhouse I am building for the kids, maybe it will be here for next weekend….
Love the leaf effect of Fatsia japonica but the flowers are also so beautiful, the ivy on steroids flowers are borne in the autumn and early winter and bring a touch of architecture into your garden
The common beech tree, one of the most underrated trees we grow anywhere in our gardens, look good for 12 months of the year and with half the leaves missing and oh believe me there may had been over half!, they still look stately, I love driving around and seeing the golden colour they turn in the autumn. They to me, are the trees of the autumn
Couldn’t make my mine up on which picture to use for this hydrangea so I decided to use them both, often under rated for their autumn colour but how brilliant is that mix of colours and to have the flower there as well was the added bonus indeed
One of my favourite hellebores, argutifolia has some of the most attractive dark green leaves and a bit spiky around the edges but it’s the green flowers that normally appear in February, makes them even more special. Such a great plant
Mahonia x media ‘Charity’ is one of the most commonly planted of all mahonia and with its spikey large leaves and in the autumn, these large highly scented flowers really makes it’s a plant well worth adding to your garden if you have the space!
Compost turning! Redoing a couple of beds for a client and it means I have to use some of great home produced compost, once I emptied one bin, I turn the next oldest in to the bay, good job too and it was pretty dry at the moment, should be ready for the spring I hope
I hope you enjoyed my 6 on Saturday from my clients garden. If you did please checkout other people’s 6 on the memes founder website https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/ I love seeing other people’s plants and what’s happening in their gardens. Why not give it ago yourself next week and give me a shout so I can take a look
Until next week, have fun in the garden
I love the architectural Fatsia – I have one too and it provides great interest at this time of year. Very envious of those compost bins!
Thank you 😊 they took about two days to build but well worth the work
Beautiful hellebore! Already in bloom like some other early plants right now … there are no more seasons …
I know I just got back from hillier gardens and saw loads of hellebores in flowers crazy 😀
Yes me too. Lovely choice and colors ! Do you remove all the old leaves of hellebores right now to ‘boost’ them?
Well yes I do indeed, normally the week before Christmas well apart from this one and foetida as they tend to flower on stalks from the leaves produced in the spring
Thanks. I will follow your advice.
The hydrangea bloom w/those leaves must look stunning. What a great time of year autumn is (except for your poor salvias – hope they survived).
It did look stunning 👍 thank you, it looks ok at ok moment, fingers crossed
Lucky you! Having clients’ gardens from which to select your six again! I’ve often thought that if I could go back to the start of my working life, I’d have been a gardener not an inside worker. My Fatsia’s still in full flower though the ground around it is covered in tiny white balls on stalks. Looking forward to the berries, if I get a glimpse before the birds start on them. I let my Mahonia run riot at the back of the shrubbery and the flowers are now too high up to smell them. I’ve sliced a path through it (the shrubbery) this year and plan to chop half of the the Mahonia down to the ground in the spring with the hope that it’ll regenerate from down low and present flowers at nose height next autumn. At least it’s one plant whose berries the birds neglect so I have something to look forward to.
Sorry you didn’t make the shortlist but it looks like there was a lot of stiff GMG competition this year. It seems rare for anyone to appear on any of the lists in successive years (unless your name’s Richard Jackson) so maybe next year …….
Cheers John it is a great career but crap pay lol, I wouldn’t change it, they are beautiful things aren’t they, not sure if I like spiders web but love the normal form. Yes they do take a prune ok, they just get to big and leggy don’t they, found pruning them late March is slightly better.
Thank you fella, yes there was rumoured to be over 100 blogs put forward very good competition 😀 I just enjoy writing ✍️, been less than a year since I started, yes shall hopefully enter next year 👍
That Mahonia is stunning! They never look so good around here.
American beeches hang onto a lot of their dead leaves and rattle them all winter long. They finally drop them in early spring, just before the new leaves emerge. Do European beeches have that habit?
Thank you,
Yes funny enough they do, helps them make great hedges with that side of holding leaves, just think they are all great trees to grow
Definitely one of my favorite trees. Our neighbors have some magnificent specimens, I have a little self-sown seedling. It’s really too close to the house, but I don’t have the heart to cut it. The people who have the house when I’m dead and gone can worry about the giant beech.
Sounds the right way around to me 👍
Still so much color! Thanks for sharing your part of the world
I do not believe that I am acquainted with that particular mahonia. It looks like Mahonia lomariifolia. Perhaps I had seen it, but thought that it was the other.
I always think of Beech as a spring tree, such a fresh green in new leaf, even the copper beech looks good then for a week or so. Hanging onto the leaves is a juvenility thing, hedges being kept physiologically juvenile by clipping. I have similar colour on little hydrangeas I did as cuttings earlier, none on the parent plants in the garden.
That mahonia is fabulous. Love it.
So did the Salvias make it through the night? I don’t have a Fatsia or a Mahonia in the garden but they’re on the list should it grow a couple of acres.
They did thank you 😊 protected by a pallet that somehow fell on top of them. Yes should look good in a garden that size 👍