Wednesday 31 October 2012

A flower for Halloween

It’s cold and windy outside, I have just spent 2 hours in the garden clearing up leaves and putting some of my plants to bed for the winter and it was good to get inside again to get warm. In my garden ‘putting plants to bed for the winter’ just means moving pots from the beds up to the nursery area where I can keep an eye on them and water them if necessary – nothing gets lifted or wrapped up in my garden over the winter. My garden has taken on a distinctly wintery look, but thanks to all the evergreen plants I have there are still a lot of greenery. And I do have a lot of plants in flower still. My dahlias are still in flower and I thought I just had to post a photo of my Dahlia ‘Striped Vulcan’ on this Halloween day, what an appropriate colour!

Monday 15 October 2012

My October garden

Autumn has arrived in London, it is either cold, crisp sunny days or hammering down with rain. The nights are chilly and my garden has started to die down here and there. I can’t really believe it’s only 2 ½ month left of 2012 – we waited so long for the spring that never really arrived, then we waited forever for the summer too and now it’s all over. Well, nothing is really over in my garden, I have plants in flower every month of the year, but the winter is going to feel very long after a spring and summer like we have had this year.

Wednesday 3 October 2012

I’m in Fuchsia heaven!

You can have fuchsias in flower from early summer until first frost, depending on which type you have and things like temperature and sun level. They don’t like too much sun and heat and will flower nicely in deep shade, although later than with some level of sun. This year has been a strange one for us all here in UK, with a cold and wet spring and most of the summer. My fuchsias didn’t start to flower until August and haven’t really taken off until the last couple of weeks!