My hull is leaking like a sieve

The paint is flaking off my hatches,

My heart’s not worn upon my sleeve

(But on my sails are scarlet patches).

 

Ian Hamilton Finlay – A Mast Of Hankies

 

A handkerchief tree – Davidia involucrata is planted out in the woodland by the Middle Pond – a tree ready for the next centenary, a wave to future gardeners here, and a nod to Finlay’s Mast of Hankies: A celebration of the smallest sails still to be seen on our British puddles and ponds…

 

It is a time to assess spaces and gaps throughout the garden, and to keep tidying up, all of the leaves falling still. The days become greyer and gloomier, dark and dank.

 

As it is now bare root season for trees a few more ready specimens are put in – dogwood, crab apple ‘Comtesse de Paris’, field maple – small decorative trees to enhance the entrance. By the formal gate area, and just in front of the Enya / Cyclops stone, a clump of black caned bamboo Fargesia Nitida ‘Black Pearl’ extends and echoes some earlier planting here, which has become a bit lost and straggly.

 

Leaf clearing continues, the colours which hold on illuminate these days. The small streams get clogged up from all this leaf litter, and the waterways look a bit messy, but are left for now, there is just so much more to come down, before they need or get proper attention.

 

Both the front of the cottage and the Temple of Apollo are given a good tidy, so that these areas retain their formality. Just a few things like Honesty are left for their seed-heads and structure. Along the perimeter of the English Parkland lanky dog rose and any other overhanging branches or growth are cleared away from the electric fence.

 

A generally mild start to the month by the middle of its days it turns, temperatures drop, mornings are crisp bright and frosty. It is a welcome change to the constant wet. The cold does come almost as a surprise, even though it should be our familiar for this time of year. We have the first snow, and everything whitens. A fleeting phantom presence. 

 

Thoughts turn to next year and the annual trawl of seed catalogues which allows the chance to consider what is possible and what is merely folly. It is a lesson never entirely taken on board, as failures just encourage future experiments.

 

There is a bit of planning still for works which were not quite completed or left behind in the rush to get the garden open on time this year after all the storm damage. That all feels so long ago now, just part of the process of gardening and the renewal of things. However there are some areas which can definitely be improved, and those jobs will be added to the winter list.