January garden
I am not a winter gardener. In the cold and wet I am much more likely to be found by the fire inside than outside pruning fruit trees. When I started to garden seriously perhaps twenty years ago I would get all keen from March to July, go away on holiday in August, come back to a tired flopping mess and basically give up again until the following spring, apart from a few bad tempered forays outside during the autumn to tidy up. Gradually my gardening time extended. I started planting bulbs in the autumn. I planted one or two evergreen shrubs so that the garden was less of a blasted heath in winter. And that was about it. Coming here has made a difference in two major ways: firstly I have become much more interested in autumn. This is partly because the light here is liquidly beautiful in September and October and the hedges are full of hips and berries. The michaelmas daisies which were here already in their hundreds throng with butterflies ...