Garden at the beginning of November 2014

Last week was busy so I'm only just getting round to posting this now. The sun is getting low in the sky these days, as you can see from the first picture! The first weekend of November was disturbingly warm, despite the low sun, and we had temperatures in the high teens, which made for very pleasant gardening. It has dipped since though, and it was 9° out in the garden today!

These are a few plants we bought on my birthday weekend (no, I haven't bloggged about that yet!). This is a replacement for "Spiky bush", who was purchased a year ago to go under the bird feeder to stop the pigeons being a nuisance down there. I don't think its roots took as it was fine whilst the weather was wet, but as soon as the weather turned warm it turned brown and died. This new one is smaller (but will grow bigger over the next ten years) and it's called Picea Glauca Globe. I've also moved the bird feeder back a bit so it's now in the middle of a bush, which should stop the pigeons compacting all the soil round the base of it.

This is part of a bed in the front garden, which had some older plants in it that weren't doing well, their leaves went all mottled and  unhealthy looking. So I dug them up, and we bought a couple of new plants. The left hand one is another Abelia Grandiflora, which was in a new section of the garden centre where they had smaller versions of many plants which were a lot cheaper (and it'll grow!). The right hand one is a Choisya ternata Sundance (Golden Mexian Orange Blossom), which has lovely bright green/golden leaves, hopefully making that corner look lighter.

These Hellebores are also newly planted, but they're ones I've grown from seed from a Hellebore given to us by a neighbour. They are showing lots of new leaves and I'm hopeful that they'll flower early next year. The Daphne has also got buds forming on it.

My newly planted up containers are looking good, and the pansies will hopefully flower through the winter. The Hellebore in the middle is from the bargain shelf at the garden centre.

Newly potted up cyclamen - this has been on the go for a couple of years now, and I keep thinking it's died each summer, but it comes back each year.

We've done some clearing up and tidying up ready for winter. The half-hardy fuchsias and the Alstroemeria have been tucked up in the cold frame to protect them from the worst of the weather (don't know whether there will be a 'worst of the weather' this year - last year I think we only had one frost).

We tidied up the patio, and I've put the herbs in pots in a line to make them easy to find for evening cooking sessions - picking herbs by the light from the security light! The wooden bench has been moved further away from the shed, as that area floods very easily (the drainage is really poor - we're saving up for a new patio) and I don't want the bench to be stood in water over the winter.

This is a couple of plants that I've had for several years, but their leaves look so pretty in Autumn I couldn't resist taking a picture. They are both Heucheras (one of my favourite plants). The back one is "Ebony and Ivory", which my Mum brought with her one time she visited. The one in the front is "Georgia Peach", which I bought with a garden gift voucher received when I left a job a few years ago. Georgia Peach has been planted in various spots around the garden, and in a container, and wasn't very happy, but it seems to be thriving in this spot.

It's been so mild up until now there are already signs of bulb foliage appearing above the soil, although the new cold weather will slow them down a bit. I love the signs of next year's flowers already appearing too - something to look forward to over the Winter! The Camellia is covered in buds and should look really pretty early next year.

And these are just three of the many buds that have formed on the winter-flowering Clematis "Wisley Cream". This is really pretty, and lovely to see flowers in the depths of the winter. I'm hoping this will be the year that I achieve my aim of having something in flower in the garden every month of the year!

Think that's all for now!