The tasks of winter in the garden, it seems to me, are twofold. On the one hand there are practical things that need our attention. Pruning out the hazels, tidying up the rose arch and the bentwood hornbeam tunnels. There is some strimming to be done in the longer grass where daffodils and narcissi willContinue reading “An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Winter and its tasks”
Category Archives: Dumfriesshire Garden
An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Visiting other gardens
I’m not an assiduous visitor of gardens, though I do have my favourites, such as Hidcote Manor in the Cotswolds (seen here in the featured image), which we head to at every opportunity. Visiting any garden is always a chance to garner new ideas and inspirations and maybe to bring them home for local adaptation.Continue reading “An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Visiting other gardens”
An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Uninvited guests
For a place that is largely unfenced and merges seamlessly with the surrounding landscape, the Dumfriesshire Garden has been mercifully free of serious damage by rabbits and deer. Certainly the former have been scarce in numbers in recent years, but the latter are seen regularly in the nearby woods and fields and do occasionally visitContinue reading “An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Uninvited guests”
An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Topiary and clipped evergreens
Topiary is putting it rather strongly. There are no elaborate geometric forms, leaping dolphins or stags at bay in the Dumfriesshire Garden. But over the lifetime of the garden I have come to appreciate more and more the evergreens (and the beech hedging) that we have been able to clip into pleasing shapes. In truthContinue reading “An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Topiary and clipped evergreens”
An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Salads, herbs, fruit and vegetables
It’s one of the great pleasures of gardening to grow some crops for the family to eat. However modest the quantities, something grown at home, freshly harvested or carefully stored over time adds to our diet and the pleasures of eating. To this end, the greenhouse and the raised beds work in conjunction to extendContinue reading “An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Salads, herbs, fruit and vegetables”
An A-Z of the 2024 garden: Roses
Roses are not my specialty. But they are nevertheless essential to most gardens. In the Dumfriesshire Garden the big rose feature is the rambler on the metal arch. We try to tidy it up every winter as it seems to get more and more unruly. But the effect can be fantastic. It’s had a reallyContinue reading “An A-Z of the 2024 garden: Roses”
An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Quercus Ilex
It was a fine February day in 2019 and I was on a pleasant visit to St Andrews. Sitting in the sheltered sunshine of the courtyard beside the University’s School of Divinity, I was struck by the massive tree, with it huge girth, that dominated the space. The tree was in the perfect shape ofContinue reading “An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Quercus Ilex”
An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Pots
Most gardens have some pots of some kind: for that special plant, some early bulbs or perhaps for summer annuals. I’m pretty much the same, though in recent years I’ve got more interested in having them dotted around the place in small groups and have invested in a few more upmarket specimens, from a favouriteContinue reading “An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Pots”
An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Orchard
A rather mixed year in the orchard began with unwelcome visitors on the 10th of February. I’ll deal with that in a separate entry to the A-Z. An uncertain flowering with late frosts increased the sense of an unsatisfactory season to come. One promising plum tree, though ignored by the visitors, didn’t make it atContinue reading “An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Orchard”
An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Northern Lights
This entry in my A-Z series is really here under false pretences. There is nothing even remotely horticultural about it. The reason for its inclusion is simply this. On the night of 10th October 2024, we got wind that the aurora borealis might be visible in our part of the world. A quick look outContinue reading “An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Northern Lights”
Quotidian 