Design and construction

Plant up this autumn

We are always so busy at this time of year. People think that things quieten down as the autumn and winter approach, but that’s not the case. Many clients wait until the Summer has ended before they start digging up the garden! Last year we only stopped for three days at Christmas and I vividly recall us all planting up a job in Richmond in the snow!

It’s never too late to start your garden. All the best plants are available from October to March. The herbaceous perennials come into the nursery, trees arrive from Italy at the end of September and roses are sold bare-rooted in November. The ones that don’t sell, get potted up and go to the garden centres, so the autumn and winter are perfect for planting. The soil is still warm from the summer but the autumn and winter rains will get the bigger specimens established and their roots down to the water table before next year’s summer drought. Lawns are happy to establish too.

We continue to work on slopes. Sometimes a client will call about the levels in their garden and worry that these will be a problem, but we could almost terrace Snowdon now, so any slope is not a problem. It’s just expensive to build retaining walls and I am proud of the clients who take that responsibility on board. Some gardens have been sloped since the houses were built back in the 1930s or Victorian times. It takes a brave householder to decide to take the slope and level it at last.

We are working on a great site overlooking the sea, which will present a challenge with the planting as the garden is blasted by salt winds throughout the year. We are creating some monolithic walls to block the worst of the winds and gales and create a sunny sheltered site around the new pool. There will be a secret, sunken island garden too – with a ‘floating’ deck surrounded by water, approached by walkways. The terraces are made from Turkish limestone, and the whole garden will be just beautiful (and hopefully finished in time for Christmas)! I remember finishing a pool for clients once who swam in it on Christmas Day – it was heated pool of course!

We are just finishing a lovely family garden, and the children are all boys! We put up a flagpole outside their ‘headquarters’ (a raised shed on a platform) so they can claim their space when in residence. We built a football goal on the side of the garage and Dad is going to paint a crowd behind it. Needless to say, they’re all football mad. Poor Mum. We built her a special ‘quiet’ place, with her own bench surrounded by lovely flowering plants, and away from the lawn and football pitch.

We have another two large sloped gardens next and then there’s a nice flat garden in Upper Beeding…oh how we’re all looking forward to being on solid ground!

If you have a difficult (or simple!) site, you can call us. Tiny courtyards or acres; they all get the same special City Gardens treatment.

Plants

Asters

I’m not sure about my Asters. They are such a purple colour. I love deep purple (especially their guitar riffs, ha, ha!), but the purple of my Asters reminds me of old ladies’ candlewick bedspreads.

However, not to be deterred by such ridiculous analogies, I thought I’d try a few plants this year, and I clumped them all together in my pink and blue border for some Autumn colour. I cut some of them back in June, so that they didn’t all flower at the top, and I think this was a mistake.

Some are tall and stately, and others are a bit too short and blowsy (like me, I suppose!). They have made an amazing contribution to the border. The flowers are very round and almost fluffy and, now everything else is over, this big splash of colour is keeping the border going. But I’m not convinced… I really wish I’d bought the white variety, or the single, more delicate type. Mum came over on Sunday, and she said she loved them. So that’s made up my mind really. They’re coming out.

Things to do

It’s time to bird watch

October is a quiet month for birds in the garden as food is plentiful out there in the fields and hedgerows, but as winter approaches, they will look to our bird tables and seed feeders. House Martins and Swallows will head off south now, and winter birds will start to arrive, such as Fieldfare and Redwings.

Some birds are staying here for winter too. Look out for Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs. The Blackcap eats red fruits and berries, and the first time I saw one on the bird table was after the last of theChristmas cake was put outside. The cherries in the cake clearly attracted a pair of Blackcaps (the female is much paler in colour, but the male really does have a little black circle on his head) and I continued to put out seeds and the occasional natural glacé cherry for them.

Try different mixes of seeds, rather than just the peanuts, and you’ll be surprised at the variety of birds that will come to your table. We have had a family of woodpeckers since I put up a seed feeder with black seeds. Blackbirds and thrushes like sultanas and raisins, and some birds prefer to eat from the ground. However, keep ground food to a minimum to prevent rats and mice living near you too! I love watching the birds from the window at breakfast time. How easy to take this all for granted. Look after them, for they really do rely on us.