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We have had some beautiful days this week. Misty mornings have given way to sunshine leaving the spiders’ webs festooned across the plants sparkling. By the time you read this, we may have had our first frost and the last of the annual flowers will have finished their long season. It has been wonderful to pick Cosmos and to harvest courgettes into November, but it does need to come to an end as the seasons move on.
As we have tidied up this week, we have found more seeds to harvest. We will be using many of these on our Plants for Free course later this month, and they include everlasting sweet peas, Ricinus communis, tree peony, Digitalis ferruginea and Crown Prince Squash. This is a great way to make sure you have your favourite flowers and vegetables next year, to share them with friends when there are far too many for you to use and of course to save money. And these will be the best quality seeds you will ever use (as long as you store them somewhere cool and dark, well labelled, in paper bags not plastic). You have complete confidence that they are what it says on the label and that they have been well looked after. Which is more than can always be said for seed packets we buy in supermarkets and garden centres.
The cooler weather heralds the beginning of dormancy for many plants and this is the perfect time of year to plant trees, shrubs and hedges. This is when you can buy many hedging plants bare root which is by far the cheapest way to do it. You can plant at any time over the winter, but it is good to get on with it now, while there is still some warmth in the ground to help the roots get established and before any cold snap freezes the ground and makes it impossible to dig. We are running a course next week looking at how best to plant trees, shrubs and hedges (14th November), as well as a day looking specifically at how to care for fruit trees – including how to plant them. Care of Fruit Trees is on 12th November. Let us know if you would like to join us.
Don’t forget to book your place on one of our Christmas Wreath and Christmas Table Decoration workshops in early December. We have just a few spaces left now.
Upcoming courses with availability:
Plants for Free: Propagation & Seed Saving 21st November
Renovation Pruning 22nd November
Floristry Workshop 4: Tablescapes 26th November
Floristry Workshop 5: Christmas Wreaths 3rd December
Floristry Workshop 6: Christmas Table Decorations 10th December
Christmas Wreath Workshops 5th, 6th, 12th, 13th December
Basic Bricklaying 14th December
Plant of the Week
Liriodendron tulipifera
Native to North America and commonly called the Tulip Tree, this is a beautiful tree with a distinctive leaf shape. The leaves turn a wonderful buttery yellow in autumn. Liriodendron means lily tree and tulipifera means tulip bearing, referring to the tulip shaped flowers which appear in summer on mature trees.
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