Tuesday 24 January 2012

Introducing My Garden




Welcome to my garden which is situated in Devon in the South West of the British Isles in an area well known for having a different climate to much of the rest of the country.  The weather is normally relatively mild in winter with gentle summers that are rarely very hot or dry.  However the previous two winters were unusually cold and dry, spring came several weeks late and the summers lacked sun and warmth (even for England!). With the winter of 2011/2012 so far proving extremely mild, I have found myself wishing I had logged nature’s activity over such differing periods and decided this would be the year I started and I hope to include notes of this in my blog.

The garden is positioned towards the outskirts of a village on the edge of a built-up area but approximately 200 yards from open farmland.  The sea lies around 2 miles to the east.  I have mixed boundaries comprising brick walls, a small stream, shrubs and fencing.  I would say the stream and the wildlife corridor it creates through the village is the most important part of the garden in terms of wildlife with hazel, ivy, hawthorn, honeysuckle and wild roses.  I hope to fill in some gaps with more nature-friendly planting in the very near future.

 

Although we're used to disappointing summers here, the summer of 2011 was an especially strange one in some ways.  It wasn't particularly wet but it was cool with little sun and some plants really did seem to become quite confused.  For example, some of my Hellebores which I would normally expect to begin flowering in late autumn began flowing in early July, bulbs began putting up leaves several months early including tulips which are already around 3 inches high.  At the same time as winter plants flowering early, the mild autumn and winter have meant that some summer flowers are still on the go including summer-flowering Clematis, Iris, Stocks, Lobelia and Nasturtium.  Strangely, the Snowdrops weren't especially early, Catkins are surprisingly still tiny and my Crocuses are still only just showing the tips of their shoots above ground now so perhaps the gardening experts who have been telling us not to worry and that things will right themselves are correct.  Hellebores that were flowering in July are pushing up fresh flower buds and we can breathe a sigh of relief that the gloomiest part of the winter will not be all the duller without our winter flowers.