We’ve added a new task to our list of winter maintenance jobs: cutting the hedge. After the struggle to find an evergreen shrub which would tolerate our sandy soil and windy climate we have finally succeeded in growing a wind break. Unfortunately we have become victims of our own success and have reached the stage
Cottage Garden
From Dawn to Dusk
With less than a month to go to the winter solstice, the days are very short and the list of wintering gardening chores grows ever longer. October and November have been predictably wet and windy, but we have had some glorious sunny days perfect for some of the heavier winter jobs in the vegetable garden.
Bieberstein’s crocus
Bieberstein’s crocus, Crocus speciosus, is native to northern and central Turkey, the Caucasus, northern Iran, and the Crimea, and was first described by Friedrich August Marschall von Bieberstein in Flora Taurico Caucasica (1808-1819). Born in Stuttgart in 1768 von Bieberstein was primarily a military man working as secretary and later aide-de-camp to the Russian general Count Kochovoski in the
Chasing rainbows
August may seem rather early in the gardening year to be thinking about the planting plan for next summer, but this far north I can see autumn over the garden wall. The glory of our island cottage garden is short: it is slow to start, building up to an explosion of colour and then a
Falling in love again…
The cottage garden and I have reached the stage in our relationship where the honeymoon is over and reality beckons. All was bliss in April, even if the starlings did peck the heads of all the scillas. May was a little more difficult as the herbaceous plants were slow to get going, the weeds rapidly