Tuesday 15 October 2013

October in London

October is a funny month here in London, it goes from one extreme to another. We had 10 days of nice, warm weather well into 20 degrees C during the day and even if the evenings are colder and it gets darker sooner, it still felt like summer and often nicer than many days we had in August. And suddenly it all changed, the temperature fell to barely above 10 degrees and that bone chilling wind you get here in London set in and we skipped from summer to feeling like winter in just a few days. It is Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day today, and it might be autumn, cold and windy and you might think that there can’t possibly be much to see in flower in a garden in London, but as usual I have lots to show you.

My garden is getting more and more enclosed, walking through it you get a feeling of being in a greenhouse with all the tall structures all around and there are plants stretching out onto the path everywhere.

The tallest plants have needed a lot of support in the bad weather we have had lately and last week I had to go out in pouring rain and gale force wind and tie my magnolia tree to the fence, as it kept blowing over and threatening to ruin the plants around it.

Here is a photo from the steps at my backdoor and the passage down from my bathroom extension. I don’t usually show this angle, but to see the tall tree in my garden I have to do it this way. The cedar tree has now drizzled a fine layer of dried needles all over my garden, on top of the bark and on the gravel path – this happens every autumn and is a nuisance as I have to remove it by hand.

Here is the same passage from the opposite angle, my nursery shelves are full with plants and cuttings, despite planting out a lot over the summer.

Some of my cuttings even have to stay on my path as there is no room for them on the shelves. This is hopefully going to be geraniums, fuchsias and two types of oriental poppies for next summer.

My seating area has no cushions or mattresses anymore, they are all parked indoors for the time being as the rain is never far way. Do you see the new blue pots on my shelf? Aren’t they cute?

I just bought them and have planted Anemone blanda and two types of Iris reticularis in them. Here on this wall they will probably come up very early next year.

My new white bed is almost finished, just waiting for one more plant I have ordered.

The white Anemone japonica is still flowering like mad, I try to snip away spent flowers when I see them and hope it will continue to flower until we get frost, whenever that will be, could be any time between November and February – or never, we have had winters without frost at all here in London these last 14 years I have been here.

The new white bed from the opposite side, the big pot in the bottom right corner is a 10 year old Chaenomeles 'Crimson and Gold' I dug up a couple of weeks ago to make room for a new purchase, it had become very woody and leggy and wasn’t really looking that nice anymore. I just pruned off 2/3 of it and stuck it in a big pot and hope to grow it there for a few years.

The shock of being pulled up at that ripe old age made it drop all its leaves but look what’s happening here, by losing all its leaves the Chaenomeles thinks that it’s winter and time to start producing flowers! By the time we get to GBBD in November the Chaenomeles should be covered in flowers :-)

Turning around from the white bed and looking down, my dahlias are the star of the garden. I thought I had lost them all for this year when the red spider mites where ravaging through the garden in June and July, but look at them now! These red ones were the least affected by spider mites and I only had to pull off leaves here and there.

The rest of my dahlias however were completely destroyed and I had no option but to cut them down to the ground. Look at them now, back in flower again!

Dahlia ‘Sunshine’ has been flowering for the last 2 weeks and although not as tall and bushy as normally, I am just happy that the 3 plants actually managed to grow back and flower again.

Dahlia 'Striped Vulcan'  is a bit behind, lots of buds but it is a very tall dahlia so I do wonder if there will be time enough to get any of these in full flower. If we can get back some of that nice warm weather it could be possible!

But the star of my dahlia bed is obviously Dahlia 'Mary Eveline', a much taller dahlia than I anticipated, this is the first year I have them and next year I will stake them better, and much earlier than I did this year (and hope for a year with less spider mites!)

Moving a bit further down to the bottom left corner of my garden, the Taxus baccata 'Fastigiata Robusta' has had a good summer too, as it has produced berries again. It doesn’t do this every year, only when we have warm summers with lots of sunshine. Every time I get berries I hope for some saplings so I can grow myself a Bonsai tree from one of them, but that hasn’t happened yet. This year I am going to try pick off some of the berries and put them in a pot and see if that’s more successful than leaving it to nature. By the way, the longest-lived tree in Britain is a Taxus baccata (yew) growing at Fortingall in Perthshire, it is reckoned to be about 5000 years old. Yes, that is the correct amount of zeros, five thousand years old.

Here is my Taxus, next spring I have had it for 10 years and it came in a tiny 0.5 litre pot about 8” tall. Funny to think this tree can still be here in thousands of years if no one cuts it down. This particular taxus has a very neat growing habit and should look more like a cypress, slim and compact and grow to perhaps 5m in 50 years, barely above the wall behind it.

I have written about my passionflower in previous posts here, this time I have put together a few photos starting from last October and ending last Saturday, showing how this little sucker I dug up from a friend’s garden has ended up. It still has lots of flowers and buds and as long as there is no frost it will continue to flower.

Here is a new plant in my garden, Hydrangea paniculata 'Pinky Winky'. I got it in the spring and it has had a bit of a sad upbringing so far. The foxes around here decided that the new gap in my border was an excellent place to use for jumping in and out of my garden on their way to wherever they go, the poor Pinky Winky has had so many heavy paws landing on it that most of the branches has broken off. During the summer Pinky Winky has dutifully grown new branches with new buds, which the foxes have managed to break just as quickly. This single branch was the only one surviving, and I have tucked it away with a screen and a pot in front of it the last month to save it as I so wanted to see the flower! This particular hydrangea gets white flowers, which then turn pink, as you can see in this photo, the process is halfway there. I already have plans for what to do next year to save this hydrangea from the foxes, I am giving the foxes a plant-free pathway where they can walk and jump – hope they get the message and leave this beauty alone!

It is fuchsia time in my garden, some of my fuchsias are only now getting in full flower. This is 'Sir Matt Busby'.

This enormous basket with fuchsias was actually hanging by my front door, but it fell down in the spring, the whole bracket came crashing down one day by the sheer weight. I have bought a new, much bigger hanging basket bracket but haven’t got around to get it up so the basket is still standing here on the ground. It has lots of buds and will flower until frost.

This is Fuchsia 'Annabel', one of my so-called annual fuchsias, mine is at least 6 years old and lives happily in this bed without being lifted. The strong winds took nearly all the open flowers and left just the buds, but there are more buds to come until we get frost.

This is Fuchsia 'Bella Rosella', one of the smallest of my fuchsias with the largest flowers.

And in my front garden I have Fuchsia 'Velvet Crush', with deep purple flowers.

Some of the flowers are more burgundy.

All these flowers are from the same fuchsia plant. I have taken cuttings of it and hope to make some for next year if these don’t survive the winter in my window boxes.

Back in the garden, the roses and sunflowers keep getting more and more entwined, it is difficult to deadhead the roses and almost impossible to reach up to the sunflowers!

I had to stand on my stool and lift the camera up in the air to take this picture. This is the sunflower 'Vanilla Ice' that was meant to grow to 5' tall....

The sunflowers have lots more buds, hopefully it will go on for another month or so.

And in between the sunflowers, the yellow and red roses are still putting on a good show.

Crimson cascade is one of my favourite roses and will flower until February when I cut it down.

This is a rose without a name, wrongly labelled by the nursery so I have no idea what it is, but it flowers continuously with at least two or three roses until February.

The rose Freedom is probably the best flower in my garden, it takes a short break now and then but also continues until February when I cut it down.

This is 'Rob Roy', a bit more sparse in flowering but very showy when it flowers.

And my cream pot rose is one of the first to flower and is never without flowers until I cut it down again. It’s only my 3 David Austin roses that have stopped flowering for now, although there are signs of new buds to come so I haven’t given them up for this year yet.

Here is another persistent flowering plant, Dicentra formosa 'Bacchanal', I got it last autumn and I have been so pleasantly surprised by having flowers non-stop since early June so I have ordered another Dicentra Formosa, a white one for my white bed. Hopefully it will be flowering just as prolifically.

The Skimmias have put on buds already and will stay with these dark pink buds until they open in April/May next year. I think the buds actually look nicer than the flowers and my three Skimmias have pride of place in my garden.

I have lots of cyclamens in my garden and they are beginning to come up, none of them are in flower yet, the closest I could find was these two tiny buds. By next GBBD there will probably be lots of flowers on them.

My Lamium maculatum 'Beacon Silver' has grown to an enormous size over the summer, I keep snipping away on the margins to keep it from smothering plants next to it, fortunately it is easy to keep in place as I have bark around it and the suckers don’t attach to the bark.

Every GBBD post I have written since last September I have had photos of my Primula vulgaris in flower, I thought I would skip that today, just say that yes, they are all still in flower! This little beauty, Primula acaulis ‘Zebra Blue’ is back in flower and I would have liked to have lots more Primula acaulis but I was too late to order them this year, they have to be ordered in June so have to remember that next year.

My last photo is of an enormous chrysanthemum I had hoped to be in flower for today, but the cold weather the last week slowed down everything and it just didn’t get enough sun and warmth to open up for today. I got this chrysanthemum for my birthday last year, and it was in a small pot, just the right size for one you put indoors on a window sill. Most people probably chuck these after they have finished flowering but I gave it a huge pot this spring and some slow-release fertiliser and the result is this almost 2’ tall plant. It would have been nice if it had flowered again for my birthday last Wednesday but it won’t be many days until it will be in full flower.

These photos were taken last Saturday and yesterday, between showers and heavy downpour, with me going from window to window waiting for the rain to ease off enough so I could get out again to take some more photos. I didn’t get any photos of the 2 clematis in flower and there are lots more fuchsias and I forgot to take a photo of the Penstemon 'Strawberries and Cream' which also is flowering still, but by the time I remembered it was pouring down again. But I think you can see from my photos that October in my garden is certainly no way a quiet time, there are lots of flowers and lots to see! 

If you visit Carol’s blog at May Dreams Gardens you can see what else is flowering around the world right now. Until next time, take care.

58 comments:

  1. Helene-your gardens are gorgeous and look more like spring than autumn! I always enjoy visiting to see all your lovely blooms. Happy GBBD!

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    1. Thanks Lee, to be honest, I have more flowers now than I had this spring, as we had a particularly cold spring this year and had to wait and wait for things to finally come through! Happy GBBD to you too!

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  2. I am happy to have visited your blog..I posted early for once and there were only a few other links on Carols site so I am visiting them all . Your fuchsias are fabulous ! We have the gall mite here in Northern California and one must be vigilant against them; they ruin the plants and spread like wildfire.

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    1. We have a lot of pest and diseases to deal with here too, especially since our winters are quite mild and don’t kill off much, but the summers vary so much and throw different issues every year depending on what kind of summer we have. Last year we were battling aphids and slugs as the summer was washed away with rain, this summer has been extraordinary good and I have hardly seen any slugs and not many aphids. Instead I have had spider mites and powdery mildew to deal with. Oh, well, that’s gardening for you!

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  3. Hi Helene, your garden is so very organized even if they are mostly in pots! Amazing arrangement. I love that arch, will that be flowering later too. And that chrysanthemum is giving a big promise, i have always wanted to do that but never did. In our case, we have to force them to flower by shortening the days, so we intentionally create the short days for them.

    Regarding the climate difference, i guess it really is showing now, that temperate countries will have longer colds and we in the tropics will have hotter temps. That is scary in the future! Happy GBBD.

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    1. My garden might seem to be mostly in pots now, but that’s only because all the spring bulbs and plants are sleeping! All the pots in the beds are just filling in the gaps at the moment and will have to be moved away as soon as we get past Christmas as that’s when the first spring bulbs start to emerge. Every inch of my beds have at least one layer of plants or bulbs some places two – one for spring and one for autumn. I have filled my garden like a box of sardines, sideways and in stacks!

      The Dregea sinensis on the arch have just stopped flowering, it flowers from late May to beginning of October, one of the real troopers in my garden and a lovely plant. It will be dropping all the leaves in November/December and in February I prune it hard back. The leaves come back in April and it flowers again in Late May.

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  4. Beautiful as always Helene!
    Happy Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day!
    Lea

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  5. Lots of lovely colour - you now need to roof the top to protect it. The sort where you can press a button and open it up like Wembley :)

    I love the hydrangea. For some reason my laminum died this year after some very vigorous growth.

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    1. Oh, I’d love to have a Wembley roof on my garden – not sure where I would send the bill, any possible sponsors can get in touch ASAP!

      I keep taking cuttings of my Lamiums, they are so easy to propagate, if any of mine died I would have plenty to replace them with.

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  6. Looking lovely, Helene! I am pleased to see the Chaenomeles is fighting back after its shock. The spotty cups are gorgeous - I would have been tempted to fill them all with coffee and down the lot! I am looking forward to seeing the Anemone blanda and Iris reticulata growing in them... the labels are fab!

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    1. Thanks, I thought spoons were the most appropriate as labels for the cups :-)
      This shelf is quite sunny and sheltered, although it only gets afternoon sun, I hope the bulbs will get the message and come up nice and early!

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  7. I do love London and I do love your garden. I can imagine the challenge of gardening in a 'courtyard' space although you get so much protection it must make the space that much more protected. Blue primula? I really must look into some of those. Happy Bloom Day.

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    1. Thanks Layanee, there are pros and cons with a small enclosed space like mine, but I do love the fact that so many plants survive the winter without any special protection. I have even bought some palms and oleanders this year that I am determined to have outside all winter. What survives survives…
      The primula acaulis are gorgeous, next year I want some from the Primula acaulis ‘Parade’ series, they are just amazing!
      Happy GBBD to you too!

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  8. What a lovely vieuw from your garden. So much to enjoy in October. Your fuchsia's are so beautiful colored. Lets hope the frost will stay away for a long time.
    Have a wonderful day Helene.

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    1. Thanks Marijke, I hope for a long autumn and a frost free winter, we haven’t had that for a good few years now – but early signs, if one are to believe them, are for a another cold winter. We’ll see….Happy GBBD!

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  9. Bella Rosella is amazing... I've never seen a fuchsia blossom that large... you are blessed with a bounty of plants that look fantastic. Regarding the Chaenomeles preparing to bloom as if it were spring... one of the 30' crabs I removed was loaded with buds, also experiencing seasonal confusion most likely. Take care, Larry

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    1. I love my fuchsias, the only thing is I wish they flowered a bit earlier when I could enjoy them more, they don’t really get to their best until October. I suppose I was the cause of the seasonal confusion of the Chaenomeles, but I have had plenty of other plants confused over the years, one of my viburnums keep flowering in the autumn and my rhododendron Dopey have produced a few flowers this autumn again, like it did last autumn. Can’t blame it on a cold summer this time at least!

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  10. Having an enclosed garden with walls all around seems so English! How wonderful to have that feeling of your own secret garden. I am very impressed with the amount of time your blooms remain on your plants - I didn't realize that bleeding heart would continue to bloom after spring! Love the anemones. They are on my wish list!

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    1. I suppose the enclosed tiny gardens are a particular London or big city thing here in Britain – we have tiny houses and tiny gardens as land is at a premium. When my house was build some 130 years ago they didn’t even have gardens, my garden was the back yard where they hang their washing, chopped their wood and had their outdoor toilet. The layout of the streets hasn’t changed, all the houses are still here, they only closed off the back in the 1950-60s so each could get their own space and make a garden if they wanted. I often wish I had a bigger garden, but I am not sure I would be able to take care of a much bigger plot :-)

      My two Dicentra spectabilis stopped flowering in July, but this one is a Dicentra formosa and apparently it flowers for much longer, I am impressed with it too!

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  11. I love Dahlias and don't have any in my garden, so it is wonderful to see your photos! Gosh, it's hard to know where to start in praise of your beauties--there are so many, Helene! It's wonderful to see some new perspectives from different angles of your garden--although I enjoy seeing every view you show us. I would never get tired of your garden. It's also nice to know what the weather is like in London this autumn. ;-)

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    1. Thanks Beth, I sometimes find it difficult to take photos in my garden, especially at this time of year as I can only take long view photos from each end, photos of the plants in the middle I would have to go next door to get a good long shot of – hanging over the fence :-)
      The weather in London at this time of year there is just one word for; unpredictable.

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  12. October in your London garden is gorgeous. Love the dahlias.

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    1. Thanks Dorothy, the new Dahlia 'Mary Eveline' has turned out to be even better than the photo I saw of it on the website, I hope it will like the winter in my garden just as well as my other dahlias do!

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  13. Beautiful garden photos!
    Greetings, RW & SK

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  14. Ah Helene, I have been teasing Myra for buying Pinky Winky. Guess what! she is insisting we take it with us. Well I must say it looks particularly good in late Summer when the blooms are white. Blooming on growth from the current year it benefits from being cut back quite hard in Spring. I am very impressed with your slideshow within a blog post.

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    1. Thanks Alistair, the fact that Pinky Winky is flowering on current year’s growth is what’s made me more relaxed about the havoc the foxes have been doing, I know it will flower next year no matter what has happened this year. I will cut it down in February and put a screen in front of it, hopefully that will save it. I do the same with my Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle' and even if it is cut down almost to the ground it is 5’ tall by the end of the summer.
      The slideshow is made as an animated gif, just a stack of pictures loaded one after the other – with so many media being used for reading blogs it’s often good to go back to the old and trusted technology, many new features can’t be read on phones and tablets.

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  15. In a word Helene, tremendous! Your garden is still looking great. H. paniculata Pinky Winky was new in my garden last year and hasn't flowered this year. That disappointed me, so have enjoyed yours instead.
    Your sunflowers really have been one of the stars in your garden this year haven't they.
    I like how you describe your garden as being like a green house. I just wish my shrubs would hurry and grow tall enough to make my garden feel a bit more enclosed. One Day!!

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    1. Sorry to hear your Pinky Winky hasn’t behaved, mine was new this spring but came without any buds. I hope it will grow bigger and better next summer. I am definitely having sunflowers next year too, probably in the exact same space, if they grow that tall again I could not have them anywhere else so that was sheer luck that none of the other survived!

      Your garden will grow, you can choose some fast growing monster plants or you can wait like I have done – my garden is 12 years next month although I did inherit some of the plants, like that big cedar tree, the peony and the camellia.

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  16. That was a fun blog. I feel like I took a mini trip to London. I'm truly amazed at the interesting variety of plants you've gathered together in your space. All your flowers are gorgeous, but those dahlias have me green with envy!

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    1. Thanks Ally, I keep a wish list of plants I would love to have in my garden, it is almost as long as the list of the plants currently in my garden, which at the moment counts about 150 plants name. I have more than 1000 plants in my tiny garden if you count every single plant, pot, bulb and corm and there are plants in flower in every corner of my garden every week of the year, even in December and January.

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  17. I am always surprised when I see your garden you have such an amazing variety of plants. I can imagine you feel yourself being in a big greenhouse with all that green and flowers around you. The blue Primula is new to me and so interesting you can keep Fuchsia Annabel outside. We used to have in the past lots of Fuchsias and Annabel was one of my favourites. I think your garden is protected by the high walls around against too hard frost and wind. The first pictures of your nursery make me so curious what kind of cuttings and seedlings you have and I too like the new blue pots, I can see the Iris reticulata and Anemone blandas flowering in it, will be beautiful in early spring.
    Wish you happy gardening in October, here we cannot do anything in the garden, the soil is soaken after 100 mm. rain only on one day. Last week my garden still looked wonderful full of flowers, now it is a real mess.

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    1. Thanks Janneke, we have had a lot of rain lately too, but thankfully the garden has soaked it up like a sponge and with the layer of bark I have everywhere I can still walk around in the beds without making a mess. We do have frost now and then during the winter, especially last winter was surprisingly cold, but I guess since the frost doesn’t last very long it doesn’t affect the plants, even those in containers. I never lift any of my plants, I have nowhere to store plants so everything has to survive outdoors.
      On my nursery shelf I have lots of different plants, mainly cuttings and seedlings from my garden which I keep in reserve, and a lot of hellebores from last year which I still don’t know if I am going to keep, I need to see if they are any interesting when in flower so it will probably be another 2 years till I get to see that!
      I can warmly recommend Primula acaulis and if you can get any of the ‘Parade’ series they are lovely, looks like roses!

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  18. I love that white leaved plant in a pot next to the autumn anemones - have I missed its name? Makes a real splash. The only good thing I can say about the rain we've been having is that at least the clay soil is more diggable. Your garden is utterly delightful as ever.

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    1. Thank you, the silvery plant is a cutting from the Lamium maculatum 'Beacon Silver', it is still in a pot because it is not really destined for my white bed, only keeping the space for another lamium which I haven’t bought yet. I plan to get Lamium ‘White Nancy’ in its place as it has white flowers, 'Beacon Silver' has dark pink flowers. You can see a photo of the flowers of 'Beacon Silver' here in my post, third from bottom.

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  19. Enjoyed your photos of many plants which I also have grown or grow now. Your big cedar seems a little out of place in such restricted surroundings but looks non the less worse for it. I have Cedrus atlantica 'Glauca' at the side of by front gate which drops its needles all year but is a minor irritant compared with the 40' larch in the back garden which when it drops is the bane of my life.
    Congratulations on the variety and number of plants that you are able to grow.

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    1. Thanks, I can assure you I didn’t plant the tree in my garden! I inherited it with the house when I moved in 12 years ago and I would guess it was planted in the 1960s or so, probably the same age as the camellia I also inherited. Back then it was probably just a cute, tiny tree in a border, no one gave a thought about the fact that these trees can become up to 230 ft tall and 3-4m in trunk diameter. It is not a true cedar, but probably a Thuja plicata, a Western redcedar, or often here called giant cedar. Totally unfit for a tiny London garden….when I moved in, the tree had branches all the way to the ground and took the space of a quarter of my garden plus some of the neighbour’s garden. Over the years I have pruned off more and more branches and it looks now more like it would do in a forest with many trees growing next to each other rather than one single specimen on its own. I would have liked to raise the crown a bit further but tree surgeons are expensive here so I keep postponing it!

      That said, I do like the tree as it is now, and I have made the bottom of my garden to fit the fact that I have this huge tree, with a woodland planting and shade loving plants. And my dahlias are planted around the roots of the tree and survive the winter and rain in the ground, they probably would have rotted anywhere else in my garden but keep nice and dry by the tree roots - so I have tried to make the best of what could have been a HUGE and growing problem :-)

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  20. Your garden just gets better and better Helene!
    The new white bed is beautiful and the Ophiopogon will make a stunning contrast. Chaenomeles in November? Brilliant. Hydrangea 'Pinky Winky' is beautiful too, I so much prefer the paniculata to the mop heads that I have inherited.

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    1. Thanks, I must admit I still like mop head hydrangeas, at least those I have, but Pinky Winky will be a real beauty if she can be left alone to grow up properly!

      I hope the white violas I have bought will spread rapidly around the Ophiopogon, if not I might have to help it a bit with making some divisions, the idea is that the white violas with the light green leaves will grow in between the black Ophiopogon leaves and make them stand out better than they do now. Well, that’s the plan anyway!

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  21. All I can say is WOW! I cannot believe how many gorgeous blooms you still have in your garden! The fuchsia, the roses, the hydrangea. Very very pretty. Love the new latte mugs as planters and spoons as identification markers. But when I read about the foxes, my jaw dropped. Foxes! In the city and in your tiny backyard. Hope they are scared of humans!

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    1. Thanks Astrid, autumn is a great time in my garden and certainly no time for slowing down!

      Foxes are a real nuisance here in London, and they are not scared of humans at all. I can go out with the rubbish late at evening and there can be a fox standing only 2-3 metres away and the fox will stand there watching me walk to the rubbish bin and back to my door without moving an inch. A bit creepy, because they are wild animals, and not at all to be treated as dogs and other pets. They can give you quite severe bites if they decide to attack, which they fortunately don’t do very often, but we hear about people, and especially children that are attacked from time to time, even about foxes that have walked into people’s house through open patio doors and gone upstairs and attacked people!

      But mostly foxes are a nuisance to our gardens, digging tunnels and rooting up plants and defecating everywhere. They will come with food they have found in rubbish bins and dig it down in flowerbeds for later – and then come and dig it up again when they are hungry. If the food is gone, which it usually is in my garden as I throw away any rubbish I find, the foxes will root around to try to find it. Some days I can walk out my backdoor just to find a fox or two lying dozing in the middle of my garden, I have even filmed them doing that, and some of them, if they are older foxes, will just leisurely walk away and jump over to the next garden when I shoo them away.

      I have written about the foxes in the past, you can find one of the posts here, with a short video of one particularly frequent uninvited guest:
      http://graphicality-uk.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/0701-foxes.html

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  22. Helene, I see you have a lot of still blooming plants, I love your pretty roses, anemones, nice hydrangea. We have low temperature now: 10 C day and 2-3C at night, so all my dahlias are in compost box. What will you do with all cuttings? Put them indoors or stay on the shelves and cover?

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    1. All my plants stay outdoors all winter and survive, the only exception is the sunflower which is an annual and the geraniums I bought this year which probably will die. Some of the cuttings are of the geraniums and I will take them in and keep them in my spare bedroom when we get colder weather. All the other cuttings are from plants that survive the winter here so they will stay on the shelves and will not need any protection or cover at all. Gardening here in Britain is so fun and easy compared to what I am used to from Norway!

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  23. You have a beautiful garden, lovely shots.

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  24. Your garden absolutely beautiful. Really interesting blog. Your roses and fuchsias are so stunning. Wonderful. Maybe I'm your newest follower. I invite you to visit my blog.
    Thank you for sharing
    Endah
    Indonesia

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    1. Thank you Endah, and welcome to my blog, you have an interesting blog too!

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  25. Love the plastic spoons in your blue containers as plant tags. What a great idea. Like you October is a funny month here too. Days can be very warm and bright but that cold wind and rain is never too far away. Good idea to bring those cushions in.

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    1. Thanks Marguerite, we certainly have a funny weather this week, quite mild with temperatures in high teens C but very windy and the rain is never far away.

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  26. Hi Helene
    I'm always stunned how many plants fit in that lovely garden :o). The blue cups are really an eyecatchter. I often go in second hand shops to find there old beautiful cups in which I plant different kinds of Sempervivumv or other small plants... they make great gifts.
    Have a lovely week.
    Alex

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    1. Thanks Alex, I have also thought about using cups for plants but how do you make drainage holes for excess water to come out? These blue cups came with drainage holes in the cup, but the water stay on the saucer (which is attached to the cup) so I have to keep pouring it away when it rains. Should have been a hole all the way trough – silly design! I know it is fairly easy to make holes in terracotta pots but I don’t think I would attempt drilling holes in stoneware pots – think I just have to keep chucking the rain water away- we have a lot of it these days! Hope you have a lovely week too :-)

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  27. You have done such an excellent job of always making sure something is blooming. :o) Your garden always looks beautiful. I really love how lush those dahlias are. When I first saw your passion vine, I thought it was a tree.

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    1. Thank you, my passionflower really looks like a tree now, you can't see the old trees stump under all that foliage at all anymore! I am researching how to prune it, might regret creating this monster by the time I get to next spring as it really needs to be pruned every spring. Not sure how I am going to do that!

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  28. I stopped by the other day, but got interrupted before I had a chance to leave a comment. I just wanted to pop back in and say how lovely your garden is looking. I have been visiting for a while now and it has been fun to see it grow and fill in over the summer. The Dahlia 'Mary Eveline' are beautiful. I had to cut my dahlias down to the ground as well, but in my case it was because of mildew. They are back with a vengeance and I hope the blooms open before we get frost.

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    1. Thanks for returning to leave a comment! I am watching my ‘Striped Vulcan’, I still have hopes for flowers as we have unusually warm weather again. My garden looks different every season, just wait until after Christmas, when all the tall plants are gone, it looks so much bigger!

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