End of the Year: Organised Mayhem at the Bottom of the Garden

In terms of a review of the year as a whole, there is not a lot to say, with it being more a case of consolidation than of change, building on subtle changes made the year before, like moving snowdrops to the woodland, thinning the apple trees to introduce more light to the woodland edge border below, and extending the blue & white borders. Even the current project, despite the organised mayhem it has generated, will only bring about a subtle change to the garden. Within the garden as a whole, mixed weather patterns created uncertainty in flowering times but there were negligible losses from the previous cold winter and no problems with waterlogging during the last few rainy and unsettled months.

Let’s dodge the showers and have a ramble around the garden, starting with the view from the house, the adjacent streamside and the shrub border. The witch hazels and cornus stems are glowing in real life but, sadly, the effect is not as obvious in a photograph. All but one of witch hazels are now at least partially in flower, very quickly adding to Boxing Day’s total.

Walking through the woodland, you can see that more of the named snowdrops are emerging from the leaf litter and discarded beech nut cases, with one or two close to blooming. At the far end, from the bothy you can look out over much of the bottom end of the garden, although the chaos around the greenhouse is not yet evident. Recent winds kindly blew most of the fallen leaves into corners, where they were more readily bagged up and added to the leaf cage so, further emphasised by the view from the back of the shed, these parts look relatively tidy. By quickly trimming hellebore leaves today (after the photographs were taken), the woodland edge borders look neater