Category: roses

The Delights of Autumn

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The 90’s were a very good decade for teenage smugglers such as myself. Fashion thankfully favoured voluminous Laura Ashley ball-gowns which provided a cavernous space to hide the quarter bottles of vodka you’d shoved into your pants as you struggled from your parents car to the door of the house or hotel in which you’d spend the next few hours bopping away at a Young Farmers Ball or an out of control 18th birthday celebration.   VERBENA Bonariensis

As we got older we no longer needed to smuggle the alcohol in and the dresses thankfully became far more elegant but the excitement of getting dressed up in our finery and dancing the night away didn’t diminish. It seemed to me this morning as I walked along the Somerset lanes that the gardening year has much in common with these parties.

Spring sees us getting all excited at the prospect of the party.  Hair is put up, make up carefully applied and we pre-load with a few glasses of champagne to make sure everything will be perfect.  Summer is when the party is in full bloom, everyone’s looking quite beautiful and women attract men like butterflies to the sweetest of roses (whether they want the attention or not!).  Autumn comes and everyone’s looking a bit bedraggled. Stockings are laddered, faces shines where make up has worn away and we’re weeping with tiredness and just a little too much wine.   Winter is  the joyous moment when the survivors breakfast arrives. We’re allowed to snuggle up under blankets, take off our shoes and tuck into enormous plates of bacon and eggs all the while discussing when we’ll meet again.

This year rather than rejecting the dismal end-of-the-night autumnal feeling I decided to embrace the season and to carry on dancing with my garden.  I started to notice the roses that are still gainfully in bloom and the verbena that are shaking their hips in the wind.  The cutest of cyclamen that are fighting for their place amongst the falling leaves and the autumn flowering viola that are bringing  a splash of beautiful ultraviolet colour to the terrace.

The long summer has meant that the dahlias have been given a reprieve and are still acting like the aristocrats of the flower garden drooping their beautiful heavy heads in disdain at the rest of the plot.

This year rather than wishing for winter and the feast to arrive I’ll be collecting chestnuts, playing conkers with the boys and enjoying the burst of colour from the leaves as they turn from glossy important green to the most vibrant of reds.

I almost forgot Halloween and Bonfire Night.  Toffee apples galore!

The formal garden gets a step closer to being formal and I attack the roses

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This summer we’ve been blessed with the most beautiful weather in Enmore – when it’s been hot elsewhere its been tropical here and when it rains just down the road we seem to have a pocket of blue sky that hovers above our idyllic little heaven.  I’m sure my friends who know more about this than me could explain how the Quantock Hills disrupt weather patterns resulting in a window of clear skies above us – but what ever the cause I look like I’ve spent a month in Spain and shiver when it dips below 25 degrees.

As a result we’ve spent most days with the french windows around the terrace wide open and the boys running between different parts of the house via the garden. For the first few weeks this was lovely until I noticed that the edge of flower boarders had disappeared behind a hedge of self seeded & romping  plantlife . Being slightly of the OCD variety myself this had to be remedied.  This week I’ve ripped out more weeds, mint, mallow and other unwanted  horrors than I care to count.  Wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow was consigned to the compost heap until finally we’d reclaimed about 5ft of terrace and found the edge of the stone boarder.  The rosemary tree also took a hefty clout of my punishment but seems to be bouncing back already; mores the pity.

My satisfaction knows no end at the moment and I keep returning to survey my triumph. Where there were once weeds there are now formal urns with trailing fuchsia and a couple of miniature cheery trees  as well as my favourite hydrangea and lavenders. We’ve also discovered a couple of beautiful roses and a clematis that were hidden behind the plant detritus in the boarders.  The terrace and formal garden as a result look a thousand times smarter and most importantly I can finally get to my washing line!

This was also the week for deadheading the roses – my homework from Andrew my gardener.  This may have seemed like a small job when I was given it but three  evenings had passed  and I was only halfway through my task.  The many climbers and ramblers that we have in the garden all needed attention and I’m pleased to say that as Andrew pulled onto the drive this morning at 8am I was cutting the very last flower stems.  After inspecting the rose cull and the terrace clear, Andrew said in his wonderful lilting voice -“Yes Lucy, well done and haven’t you worked hard”.  From such a famed rose man this meant more to me that decades of praise from managers at work and made me so very happy to be working in my garden #lucysgarden.