The soft fruit has been amazing this year. Greengages were delicious and redcurrants hung like little translucent red jewels in their thousands. Courgettes are currently  in full swing, we’ve taken to picking them small, cutting them in half lengthways and marinading in a little oil, lemon juice, garlic and herbs on the barbeque.  I couldn’t get a decent crop of tomatoes ripe for love nor money but the few we did get were tasty.  I’m going to be making a load of chutney by the look of it, the apple trees are laden!

Salvias are still the star of the show and have been throughout the summer. The best do-er  here is S.microphylla ‘Pink Blush’ described as ‘hardy sub shrub with aromatic green foliage and magenta pink flowers’.  It has been hardy here now for several years, but I do take a few precautionary cuttings in the summer, they root really easily.  I’ve also a gorgeous blackcurrant sage, a pretty lavender one and the bright red ‘Royal Bumble’. They all died back last winter but reappeared in late Spring and have made a lovely addition to the front of our borders here at Charnwood.

We had a bit of revelation when garden visiting at the end of August on a trip out to Whatton in the Vale where there is a really good garden, full of colour and interest.  I noticed there were 2 Olive trees there that looked a little different and so we asked the garden owner why: she told us that one of them was a weeping olive. Why such a Big Deal do you ask?  Well Peter bought me a lovely Olive tree a while back that is now in a large pot planted up with herbs.  I couldn’t work out how to prune it as all the advice on the internet showed trees that looked a bit different and were pruned usually into lollipops, not something I’m very keen on.  So I did my own thing.  Now I realise that this too is a weeping tree so I can let it weep with a gentle prune and no lollipop:  hooray! Another gem of information she shared was that the weeping kind is less likely to get a nasty bug that is currently affecting Olives so hooray again!

Spring bulb planting time is upon us. Autumn is a really busy time with my Council work so I tried to restrain myself from buying the whole catalogue.  de Jager are my go-to company, they are reasonably priced and good quality which is especially important if you want more than a handful of bulbs. I’ve ordered more of the lovely soft pink hyacinth ‘China Pink’ to put in the magnolia garden, and some of my favourite daffodils, Hawera and Thalia, to plant in the borders before the herbaceous perennials get going. We’re having some work done on our seaside garden as the sleepers are rotting away so it will be a chance to do a bit of a re-design and provide some new planting opportunities.  That means we will have some beds for the smaller plants that tend to get swamped in the rest of the garden.  I’ve ordered a little species narcissi ‘’Golden Bells’ which is a sport of n.Bulbocodium, that should be in proportion to the new  alpine plants.

Our trip to Great Dixter in the summer was just wonderful, the garden completely envelops you and lifts the spirits.  There was a fabulous cosmos going by the awful name of  ‘double click cranberries’, awful name yes but it really was the colour of that fruit! So that’s on the list to grow next year. I also found the pink Phlomis I’ve been searching for, so I came back a happy gardener.  Garden visiting this year has been a joy, so a mental note to me: do more of it next season.

Take care and enjoy your garden before it gets too cold to venture out!