Is Your Garden Winter Ready?
To the uninitiated, the idea of gardening on Christmas Day might seem absurd. But for me it’s a chance to reconnect with nature after the excesses of the season. There is nothing quite like the feeling of wellbeing that I get from being outdoors on a cold crisp sunny day.
The dreary days of November were occupied with collecting fallen leaves and cutting back collapsed perennials, before adding a thick layer of well-rotted organic matter to the borders, transforming the garden from windswept chaos to tranquil stillness.
Mind you, there’s nothing tranquil about spreading the fourteen bags of well-rotted farmyard manure on the mixed borders, four bags of shingle to top up the pathways, three bags of composted bark for the magnolia, pencil cypress and cornus Kousa, and two bags of bark chippings over the fernery.
With the garden now Winter-Ready, the sense of urgency to complete the autumn tidy up is replaced by a calm determination to take other seasonal jobs at my own pace. So, back to Christmas Day. My most eagerly anticipated task of the dormant season is pruning the climbing roses. Alfred Wainwright’s shrewd observation that, ‘there's no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing,” is my motto. So, after breakfast you will invariably find me tooling up for the job. Skiwear, thermal gloves, deerstalker hat, protective eyewear and of course sharp secateurs, and I’m good to go.
I have a vigorous climber, rosa Etoile de Hollande, that wants to be 15ft tall, growing on an 8ft trellis; my all-time favourite rosa odorata Mutabilis which flowers its head off over next door’s fence, and sweet smelling single flowered rosa Summer Breeze on the rose arch. During the week between Christmas and New Year I will prune them into submission and then I can sit back and relax.
Or perhaps not! I’ve still got the ornamental grasses to sort out, now that they are flying around the garden like streamers in the brisk winter winds. And the ivy behind the apple tree needs trimming. Let’s face it, the garden may be Winter Ready, but am I? I will always find things to do outside, simply because my garden is my All-Year-Round Happy Place.
Love Caroline x