Take a walk in our winter garden at Ednovean Farm and enjoy a season when the garden quietly rests, yet the layers of textures in the borders glow on those glorious days of winter sunshine.
Winter! A foundation for the spring garden
Winter brings the defining moment to the garden year; a season that is the touch stone of new life. And with winter the planting gains its own structural beauty.
There can be a little bit of magic in the low winter sunshine to the garden now, as tentacles of light creep deeper into the borders, showing surprising new scenes.
It sometimes seems in Cornwall that as soon as the last leaf falls from the trees, the first shoots of spring bulbs burst from the earth. And oh how I welcome those little promises of warmer days to come as we languish in the short dark days of winter.
The lengthening days of January brings the first breath of spring back to stir the garden again.
Yet I must confess to being a reluctant January gardener each year after the sated days of Christmas.
Wintertime is a great time to take stock of the garden and I love to wander the paths at this time of year, to look at the relationship between the plants.
Wind breaks
The winter gales will test the resilience of our sheltering hedges. It is now that the palms really come to the fore offering an evergreen structure to the garden throughout the winter months.
The outer Cordylines comb and slow the wind and the Date Palms twist and swirl like octopuses on the sea bed. In Cornwall it is important not to stop the wind or it will rebound even more savagely but gently to buffer and deflect.
Feeding the birds
At the time of year we are more often to be found more in the stables beside the car park. I must say it is the timeless topiary tere that gives me the most pleasure now, and the birds visiting the feeders above them
Spring flowers
The first narcissi to open in our garden is alwasy the tender The Soleil D’or. This is a gorgeous, sweetly scented narcissus, planted to gently encircles an old granite gatepost. But it was later to flower this year. The normal daffodils are looking pretty perky though and look well established as they nose their way from the earth in fresh green clumps.
And garden mice!
Each year I add more bulbs to our garden and last year I splurged on some white alliums to follow the daffodils in the spring garden. I interlaced them between the Russian sage and stipa grasses. All held securely behind the protective bunny fencing – so far they have survived. Sadly the crocuses have not fared so well, although the memory of a back breaking afternoon planting them still lingers on. Mice must need a different sort of fence apparently but it was polite of them to leave one bulb form the two packets planted!!
This spring’s year’s garden project
We have some steps taking shape leading up on to the terrace outside of the Italian Garden and the wood has arrived to form a potage in the far corner of the Italian Garden. So our garden at Ednovean Farm will continue to gently evolve with the season and my Garden diary will be back in the spring again.
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