Elegy: Winter

By November the first frosts have arrived and the nights have drawn in. Low winter sunlight highlights the papery seed cases of the honesty plants, whose flowers attracted butterflies and bees back in the early summer.

I allow all the old withered seed heads to remain throughout the winter, providing food for birds. I'd much rather have a wildlife-friendly garden than a tidy one. In  hard winters I've seen blue tits peck holes in poppy capsules like this, to reach the small insects that spend the winter inside.

Autumn's crop of berries disappeared fast - except for the yellow-berried holly. The birds took all the red holly berries long before Christmas but the yellow counterparts would still be there, untouched, in spring.

The first snow-fall in December came as a surprise after a long, mellow autumn and we didn't expect the snow to linger for long. It was to last until mid-January.

Constant heavy snow hid the debris of last year's garden, half-buried the greenhouse and weighed down branches............

... so indoor gardening became the only option. Tibouchina plants, grown from cuttings taken last spring, flowered right through the darkest days of winter in the conservatory.

At Christmas the skeletonised remains of the fruits of the Chinese lantern plants (Physalis) growing outside the conservatory provided decorations for the Christmas tree - with a touch of gold lacquer.

Early in the New Year the tropical orchid season begins and after being kept cool in the greenhouse for the previous summer and autumn this Cymbidium produced two magnificent sprays of flowers.

Even when snow covered the ground a few plants still flowered outside, including the winter sweet bush (Chimonanthus), whose flowers produce a perfume even in the coldest weather.

The heavy snow brought more birds and animals into the garden than ever before. We had visits from grey squirrels on a few occasions in the past, but now they became regulars on the bird table. Cute and entertaining ........... but will they become a nuisance next year?

Bramblings have been rare visitors in the past but this year a flock of about twenty became regular customers at the bird table from Christmas onwards - and were particularly fond of black sunflower seeds.

A family of five bullfinches visited the crab apple tree every day for about a month, shredding the rotting fruits to reach the seeds inside, but the most memorable bird visitors by far were....

.... this flock of waxwings. For just half an hour, on a grey dawn in January, this noisy flock of about twenty raided the frost-softened crab apples. It was a magical moment - and watching them made me late for work. You can trace their visit back to that bumper display of crab apple blossom in spring, that produced such a heavy crop of fruit.

By the end of January the snow had thawed - time to begin clearing up last year's debris.

The snow may have gone but hard frosts still turned the soil to iron. Norway maple seeds that had blown in during last autumn's gales lay on the soil surface, waiting to germinate as soon as the weather became milder. Left to its own devices, the garden would become woodland within a few years.

Bitterly cold weather in early February created a frost garden. The downy leaves of mulleins were covered in frost at dawn ,which melted into sparkling water droplets as the sun rose.

Frost crystals etched the surface of bramble leaves in the hedge ....

.... decorated the edges of ivy foliage .....

 ... and grew into a forest of crystals, so that  ....

.... even weeds like stinging nettles acquired an icy beauty.

 Undeterred by the cold, the lenten roses pushed through the soil whenever a thaw set in ....

... and the sweet scent of this winter-flowering honeysuckle Lonicera x purpusii hung in the air.

The first snowdrop leaf tips usually begin to push through the soil in January but the icy winter slowed them down and it was late February before they were at the best, threading themselves through last autumn's dead flower stems - that I never got around to removing. A new gardening cycle had begun, rising through the decaying remains of the last ............ and now it was time to get ready for the coming year.

I wished I had dug the vegetable plot before the cold weather set in, then the frost would have broken the soil down into a fine tilth, the weeds would have been deterred and it wouldn't have been such hard work to get this soil back into good condition.

Still, during all those days of inactivity, when I could do nothing but stare out of the window at a snow-covered garden and regret the passing of yet another gardening year, I had time to hatch plans for the coming campaign. Ambition set in again. I have plans for this corner, but first I'll need to remove this conifer stump, whose roots have turned out to be unexpectedly large and wide-ranging. This is going to be hard work....

So here we are on the threshold of another gardening year, with much to do and spring already loosening the bud scales of some of the shrubs, like this Amelanchier. Given good fortune, each of us will only experience spring's sense of expectation and reawakening around seventy or eighty times in a lifetime. Every year, at this time, I make a resolution not to miss a moment of the next one that's on the way. Time to pull on the wellies and gardening gloves once again.

Elation: Early Autumn

Summer has slipped away and some of the trees are already showing a hint of autumn colour. Most of the vegetables have been harvested but summer annuals like the pink Cosmos in the foreground here will flower right up until the first frosts in November.

The silver birch that started life in the beech hedge as a seedling twenty five years ago is a graceful tree all year round, but its golden foliage in autumn is someting I always look forward to.

Annual dahlias were the first plants I ever grew, when I was given a packet of seed as a child - an inspired choice, as they germinate easily, flower reliably and produce flowers in the kind of bright sweetshop colours that appeal to children. I grow a few in most years, as a reminder of how I got started as a gardener.

This Clematis cirrhosa began flowering in early autumn, climbing through the lower branches of the crab apple tree. Hard winters mean that it doesn't fulfill its full winter-flowering potential here in Durham, but it's a strking plant in autumn.

My first job when I left school was taking Chrysanthemum cuttings in a nursery so the scent of Chrysanthemum sap brings back memories.

Borlotti beans are one of those vegetables that are visually attractive as well as being productive - great for adding to stews in autumn. They need a long growing season and the pods are slow to mature so I have to plant them as early as I can in spring - and keep my fingers crossed that we don't get any late frosts.

Autumn-fruiting raspberries are just about the most productive fruits in the garden, producing fresh berries right up until November - and jam that lasts through the winter. This year we picked about twenty pounds and the blackbirds had their share too. They are less prone to raspberry beetle infestations that the varieties that fruit in summer.

The weird African horned melon fruit that I grew in the greenhose sat in the fruit bowl for a long time until I plucked up the courage to eat it. It's slimy pulp tasted like cucumber with a dash of lime juice. Refreshing. I could grow to like it.

With autumn approaching insects like this seven-spot ladybird were searching for places to hibernate. Not much hope of squeezing into the small spaces in this teasel head, but many hibernate in the leylandii hedge, that provides evergreen shelter.

Everything is going to seed - food for the garden birds in winter

In the greenhouse there are hollyhock seedlings, which are destined for the back of the border next summer. The Cymbidium orchid on the bench at the end will remain in the greenhouse until the end of autumn - it needs a drop in temperature to stimulate flower bud formation - and it will flower from January onwards.

Living stone plants Lithops in the conservatory flower from late summer onwards. The swollen leaves mimic pebbles. They'll need to be kept bone-dry through the winter, otherwise they'll rot away.

Biennials, like this caper spurge Euphorbia lathyris (growing up through golden-leaved feverfew plants) have come to the end of their first season's growth and will flower next year. This plant has exploding seed pods that hurl seeds around the garden. I've only ever sown the seeds once, about twenty years ago - since then self-sown seedlings have produced these weirdly geometrical plants every year. Caper spurge plants bleed white latex - liquid rubber - when they are damaged and they are said to deter moles.

The autumn of 2010 was a memorably  long, slow, mellow one.......

.... spindle Euonymus leaves turned crimson....

... Fothergilla produced fiery shades of yellow and red....

... the Japanese maples were particularly fine....

.... and even the apple tree foliage produced a fine display of colour, with leaves remaining on the trees for much longer than usual...

When the beech foliage began to turn brown in late October hedge cutting - my least-favourite job - couldn't be put off any longer.........

... but it had its interesting diversions, uncovering nests of blackbirds, a song thrush, a wren and a goldfinch - testament to a successful breeding season for some of the garden's other residents.