How the winter of 2010/11 dragged on, but it only heightened the joy of seeing the first snowdrops and aconites appear in mid February giving the first glimmer of better days to come. The additional snowdrops planted across the centre of the Ring o’ Trees made a good vista from The Bluebell Inn and the 750 new crocus planted under the sign at the bottom of Church Hill gave a lovely display in the first week of March.

And suddenly it was a rush to clear up the garden from its winter shroud. Hedges needed cutting, dead stems and leaves needed cutting and raking, bittercress needed weeding before it spread, the greenhouse needed cleaning and tidying and best of all – it was time to plant seeds!

There is nothing better than sieving some compost, damping it down, sprinkling a packet of almost invisible seeds on it and putting it on a windowsill to germinate. Many seeds only require 15-20C to geminate which is normal house temperature with a little central heating. As little as a week later, the soil erupts and up pop tiny stems of promise. Big seeds make big eruptions – even more fun!

Very slowly the temperature started to climb and a cool March gently gave way to warm, sunny days in April. There were no blustery showers or strong, east winds and as April progressed we became more and more aware of the lack of rain. Cracks appeared in the fields, primulas, primroses and other early bloomers held their flowers for much longer than usual and the warmth brought the development of many plants on faster than normal.

By the end of April and beginning of May, the garden was looking decidedly unbalanced.

Delphiniums, not usually in flower until June, opened their first flowers at the end of April among the daffodils and tulips and a magnificent show of lupins filled the flower beds accompanied by aquelegias, pulsatillas, aubretia, sweet rocket and more. It was beautiful, but it was also frightening. Nature should not be so extreme and after a long dry period during last summer and the very harsh winter, this only added to the list of imbalances.

The bluetits and great tits took up residence in every nestbox we possess, with busy parents almost flying over each other as they took their favourite flight route back to their youngsters. With so little rain, and therefore perhaps fewer soft bugs and insects in the trees, I thought they ate more sunflower seed from the bird table this year, but it was difficult to tell.

By May, farmers of vegetable crops were watering the fields continuously while the arable landscape that we are more familiar with, of barley, wheat, rape and field beans, produced the shortest height crops I have seen for years. Wheat heads that were not filled with corn, were light and airy if you squeezed them. The crop may have been standing upright but it was not as it should have been.

The Gardeners’ Mart took place around the bus shelter in Hempstead on the 21st May. I worried that since no-one could actually get a fork in the ground, that the garden plants would not sell, but we are a resilient and trusting bunch, we gardeners, and knew that rain would come. June arrived, and so, thankfully, did the rain. And it was the right sort of rain – long, slow, gentle spells every couple of days that get into the ground properly. Nobody minded after such a barren Spring, and whereas normally we would be thinking of enjoying the garden furniture, no-one seemed bothered that it was sitting in the garden doing nothing.

You can always plant a tub or a pot or a hanging basket, or a raised bed with compost from a bag, and that avoids all the problems of hard, clay soil in the ground, so the village took on a lovely new colour as all these additions were made. And they present the opportunity to try out something you have not grown before because you can watch it at close quarters and water it regularly.

On June 3rd my first roses opened. Last year had been a very good year for roses after the cold winter of 2009/10, but with the winter being so harsh last year, I expected that a good show two years on the trot was probably unlikely. I could not have been more wrong. The blooms were bountiful and perfect until the rains damaged them, but if you walked through the churchyard and stopped to look at the climbing roses in the beds by the porch, they would have made you smile. And the evening scent on a still night was glorious.

Wimbledon started in the cool, showery days that we know so well, where breaching 20C seems to be just beyond the weathers capability, but the middle Monday of the tournament showed a burst of temperature to 29C that caught us all out. It did not last and normal conditions resumed.

By now, the vegetables were coming on stream, well, those that has not been eaten by the muntjac, or dug up by the moles, or nibbled by the pigeons, or infested with greenfly or anything else that had chosen to have a go at them. It was deeply depressing. Months of hard work and expense going to waste. Thankfully the fruit cage produced wonderful raspberries, redcurrants and gooseberries. The problems made us want to cover the rest of the veg patches, but that is ridiculously expensive and inconvenient and you should not have to. No gardener minds sharing the odd thing with nature, that’s normal, but decimation is another matter all together.

And the lawn was under attack too. Over the last three years the black and red ant nests in the lawn have got bigger and bigger. By June I had used three large tubs of ant powder on the lumps that kept rising in the grass and was still nowhere near on top of the problem. The cold winter had not reduced their numbers at all. If anyone has a solution, please share it. And before I leave the topic of pests and diseases, I also noted far less red lily beetle this year and a burst of ladybirds in late summer.

As July arrived the flower borders hit perfection. I always like to let Lynchis coronaria seed itself around the garden as the soft, silvery foliage and airy cerise flowers make a perfect ‘filler’ in every part of the garden. Some plants are just good ‘doers’ and this is one of them. A few dry days at the beginning of July were perfectly timed to allow the pots of lilies to open and stand majestically. The colour range of these is wonderful as you can choose solid, bold colours in traditional yellows and oranges, or those with speckled tongues in soft whites, pinks and clarets, or two tone shades, or speciality ones, of which I love Eyeliner. Each petal of pure white has a black line around its edge, making its colour and definition stand out even more.

The Annual Show came one week too late for the very best results from flowers in the garden and the biggest frustration were the gladioli that would not flower. The intention was to have perfect blooms for the Show which allegedly take 100 days from planting the corm. I can only assume the dryness was the problem as they did not get started quickly enough. In fact my last one, a bi-colour, opened on September 10th! We will give this another go next year and see if different conditions produce different results.

Throughout late July and August the herbaceous borders were a perfect picture. They soaked up every drop of rain that fell steadily every second or third day, benefitting from never struggling for water, with full green leaves all the way up the stems. I didn’t once reach for a hose during this period and my collection of phlox’s were at their best ever, in shades of pale pink, medium pink, mauve and violet. Monada (Bergamot) also had an excellent year as did salvias, batchelor’s button, helleniums, summer clematis and many more. Of course one group of plants that were not quite so happy were the geraniums, as the water destroys their multi-headed blooms and ruins the petals. But you can’t have everything.

Runner beans and in fact all the bean crops, burst forth during the week August and suddenly we were inundated with trugs of produce. The courgettes were not far behind, but the tomatoes did not fair so well in some substantial compost in the greenhouse. The plum tree gave of her best, despite loosing a branch on a particularly windy day, and with fairly limited wasp invasion due to the wet conditions. We managed to pick the whole crop before much fell and perished. And of course, the August rain swelled the already heavy crop of apples to the point where I thought every tree would break. Even the Egremont Russet took on a more dramatic lilt than usual and as we turned the corner to September with instant delivery of the first autumn Atlantic lows blowing in, fallen fruits could be gathered every day in high quantities. The combination of conditions this year actually brought the apples on 2-3 weeks early. The weather settled down again though and September and October proved to be beautiful, warm months and we had the highest ever temperature of 29.4C recorded on Sunday 2nd October. The geraniums and hanging baskets prospered again. new cosmos stems flowered, the dahlias looked magnificent, evening primroses opened and it felt like summer would never end…

With the abundance of fruit and apples this year, how appropriate it was that one class of the Gardeners’ Club Autumn Show should be a spiced apple pie (provided you could store your apples for long enough!). And there were a dozen entries who competed for the Domestic Trophy, eventually won by young Harris McCarthy.

Eventually the dark and cold nights arrived in mid October. The final ‘cutting down’ of the garden is always a chance to look over the condition of everything and ponder alterations. It is time to make alterations to hedges and do that hard cutting back that will give them a much better shape for future years. It is also a chance to do some maintenance on them which you cannot do in summer, including reducing excessive weeds or unwanted stems and giving them a much needed feed and mulch. If you are tackling serious hedge reduction, remember it takes three years – first year one side, second year the other side, third year the top. But this is well worth doing as you then have a lovely hedge for the next 10 years. Smaller cutbacks can be done in one go.

And the shed always needs a clear out before all the pots are stored away for winter. Chuck out all the unwanted remnants of products that will not over-winter, sharpen tools, take note of what you needs replacing or is running out – so when you get asked what you want for Christmas – you might actually get what you want this year!

Happy gardening.
Diana Frost

As the winter of 2009/10 proved to be the coldest for over 20 years, January and February can easily be dismissed for commentary as it was far too cold to be outside and no gardening took place. The depth of frost in the ground was notable to at least 100mm (4”) so at least we should have killed off some pests and diseases this year. Walking on frosted grass tends to kill it off though, so there was no point in inspecting the garden as you do more damage than good, so we waited for warmer days.

If you count winter as December, January and February in broad terms, then the ‘last day’ of winter was a howler. A deep ‘low’ (Atlantic storm) swelled up from Spain and Portugal killed 45 people on the Atlantic coast of France as it travelled north-east and fortunately only grazed the south-eastern tip of England with wind and rain.

March 1st arrived, and in the true fashion of ‘the quiet after the storm’, it was a beautiful day with no wind, blue sky and pure sunshine - such a contrast to recent times and so good to see the sun at last! It did not mean however that warmth was on the way, and doggedly the daytime temperature would not move above 6C with sharp frosts at nights. Time to check the nest boxes and make sure they are clean, secure and dry for this season’s (bird) customers, who needed a lot of feeding with seeds and fat balls this year to help them through the cold winter.

The snowdrops opened and the cold weather gave us the benefit of a long lasting display. This also gave us a longer time to divide and move the bunches after flowering (’in the green’). We will extend the rather sparse display in the Ring o’ Trees for 2011.

It was noted that the small daffodils at the triangle that we all pass in our cars every day were a full month behind in blooming this year, and the garden daffodils put on a spurt of growth when the figures hit double digits and started to bloom in the last week of March.

Plug plants faired better in the greenhouse than propagated seeds which struggled in the low light levels and with the cold nights. Nothing grew quickly and the evidence was there to see in the Garden Centres, who equally struggled to supply good quality young plants for purchase. I suspect prices will be high come peak season for basket and bedding plants in May this year, to offset the high costs of heating that have been used to get the plants to grow.

Very slowly they reached double figures and the plants in the greenhouse came to life. It was short lived and heavy rain and wind set in for the last week of March bringing deep snow to Scotland. The greenhouse came to a standstill again and in the beds and borders there was time to weed the dreaded bitter-cress before it seeded too far, and remove the perennial weeds that had spread during winter.

The growth of algae and moss on furniture, pots, compost bins, tree branches and especially the lawn seemed much worse than in previous years, so early April was spent cleaning the furniture and pots but with the lawn having to wait for warmer weather in late April or May, otherwise you just drag the good grass out by the roots with the moss.

April is also the time to get to grips with your pots of lilies and red lily beetle. This pest has become far more prevalent in recent years and action is needed before the plants produce their leaves which will turn to a sticky black mess on the undersides from this beetle’s eggs and secretions. As it is bright red it is easy to see, but cup your hand underneath as you try to remove them as their defence mechanism is to fall to the bottom of the stems and get lost in the leaf junctions. They need to be destroyed or they will re-infest the plant.

While sun levels were good in April, it was also exceptionally dry and this was followed by a dry May too. The 10mm of rain at the end of the first week was vital as there was precious little else in the month. The big demon of this month proved to be the intense late frosts on the 10th and 11th which killed off any soft fleshed squashes and tender plants that had ventured from the protection of the greenhouse, cold frame or poly tunnel. Fruit blossoms managed to survive better than expected which was good since this has been a fantastic year for blossom and bodes well for a good fruit crop later in the season. I did loose my new Pluot tree – a combination of an apricot and plum which I was experimenting with. It has survived perfectly happily through all the snow and ice of winter, but the hot sunny days of early May and these two bitter nights were too much and death was immediate.

All of the above though, meant that by the time we held the Gardeners’ Mart on Saturday 22nd May, there was pent up spending in Hempstead waiting to be unleashed. And we had the answer for it. On a perfect day of blue sky, sun, warmth and no wind we presented a fabulous array of flowers, vegetables and plants in very good condition and within an hour and a half we were sold out, selling over £1000 of items who average price was 50p-£1. A great morning and a great boost for Club funds. We sold over 40 courgettes (a reflection of domestic casualties, I think) and 50 tubered dahlias.

Dahlias are beautiful and great value and have been over-looked in recent years as they are considered too blousy. But large borders demand some striking plants and once you get over the initial growth stage and the attempts of slugs and snails to deny you your prize, they are well worth growing. Their late summer addition to the border when other plants have passed their best is terrific. They will need staking against June’s thundery downpours, but they will love the moisture this brings and will put on substantial growth.

The Spring dryness also meant that the grass grew more slowly meaning less lawn mowing, that slug and snail numbers were noticeably down whilst the cold nights meant that the veg patch soil was slow to warm to temperatures suitable for planting out potatoes etc.

Chelsea Flower Show in the pre Bank Holiday week (25-28 May) managed to maintain its high standards of display although many presenters said they took more stock with them this year to overcome failures.

By the end of May/first week of June, the garden had mostly caught up on its late start and the veg patch was fully planted with salads, beans, squashes, carrots etc and the hedges had burst to life so strongly that the first cut was needed. Tulip and daffodil leaves could be removed, delphiniums were at full height, bearded iris and alliums were in full glory and the roses were budding up. In the strawberry patch, the flowers had opened and small fruits were forming and these will be ready for Wimbledon fortnight, right on cue. It is amazing how everything catches up after a late start.

Gardeners and farmers are never satisfied. After the 10 mm of rain on May 1st we had 25mm between the 6th and 8th of June and then the sun came out and the temperature soared here in the East and we did not see rain again until w/c 12th July. In that time, without wind and rain to knock them about, the roses, pot flowering lilies and summer-flowering clematis gave the most magnificent displays. The 20 year old Queen Elizabeth rose outside my back door, which I rather riskily cut hard back into the old wood last winter, produced over 100 blooms in its first flush and the rambler by the front door smelt heavenly in the warm, still evenings.

Anything that was watered during this period performed very well, and summer bedding plants came on quickly with the combination of evening watering and daytime sun, but the rest of the garden turned quickly to a crisp. Lawns went brown, poppies collapsed, phlox shed all their lower leaves and drooped, the stems of astrantia bent in half and only the tough old hardy plants such as yellow loosestrife, red hot poker, achillea and day lilies, really coped well.

In the fruit cage, assisted by some watering, the redcurrants and gooseberries looked good but raspberries stayed smaller in size. There was no question of getting a fork in the rock-hard ground and the lawn mower has one of its most redundant spells, only putting in an appearance once a fortnight rather than twice a week as is common at this time of year.

The Hempstead Annual Flower Show on Saturday 10th July, whilst well-attended with over 300 entries, showed the effects of the late frost and recent dry spell with vey few vegetables ready. Trusty courgettes had just come on stream and lettuce were in good form for having very few slugs and snails around, but carrots and greens generally were scarce and potatoes were prone to scab.

There were relatively few vases of flowers in the Show and I will write to encourage everyone to find a strip to grow some cut flowers in future, and recommend some varieties to include.

Late July weather was very average, as was the first half of August. The 14mm of rain that fell on the 10th were welcome for the garden but not for those on holiday. Hopefully it will help swell apples which are barely half size at present and we are still waiting to harvest plums which have stayed stubbornly green in the damper conditions of recent weeks. The wasps look thoroughly dejected being made to wait so long for their favourite food. Our pear tree is having a year off this year with almost no fruit having produced two bumper harvests in the last couple of years. It deserves a rest and with the fickle dry/wet conditions of this year, it picked a good year to do it.

The weather men say that the Jet Stream has moved to its autumn position of sitting south of the UK, putting us in the run of Atlantic lows which pile in one after the other. I think summer has departed early. By contrast, where the curve of the Jet Stream is up in the Baltic, Russia has been burning up in 30-40°C degrees since early June and the harvest is ruined while Pakistan has its worst floods for 80 years.

Meanwhile, our late planted (really, really late planted) runner beans are happy with the cool conditions and are fast reaching the top of the canes with the first flowers showing. We do not need to water them every night and rain water always produces the better growth than tap water. The greenhouse with its shading of white paint, is producing fantastic crops of cucumbers from two plants and tomatoes are formed but not yet red. The quantity of tomatoes that have set this year seems better that last year where the failure rate was unusually high.

Down by the house my tub of nasturtiums is now disgusting black stalks only. If you ever want to study how amazing nature is, just plant a packet of nasturtium seeds. I have deliberately kept these to see the whole life story. Having propagated the seeds in early May, the plants were transferred to a pot three weeks later and to a large tub four weeks after that. With average compost and plenty of water they grew quickly and good flowers were displayed from late June to late July. The blackfly then took over smothering leaves and stems, which brought in huge quantities of hover flies and ladybirds. At the same time, the Cabbage White butterfly eggs hatched and the developing caterpillars ate every leaf on the plant, hence the bare stalks left behind.

I am reliably informed that at this point you cut the whole plant back to nothing and wait for it to grow again, so my experiment continues – more on this later!

The autumn raspberries started cropping from mid August with better results than the summer ones and there were plenty of courgettes and squashes every day. Blueberries were starting to take on their smoky blue appearance. In the flower beds, dahlias were in full glory now along with inulas, the second flush of roses, phlox, monardas, echinacea, helianthemums, Batchelor’s Button and the beautiful Toad Lilies. The graceful, mid blue agapanthus were revelling in the cramped conditions of their clay pots and were in full flower, but the cannas did not do well. I suspect the soil was not rich enough for these hungry feeders.

It was a good time to collect seeds from the Spring flowering plants and then cut them down, but compost bins needed sorting before a large amount of new material could be added. Cleared spaces in the garden were mulched, full compost bins turned over into vacated spaces, and the newly created spaces filled with new material. When the harvest is in from the nearby fields and on damp evenings, bonfires will clear the non-compostable debris such as blackthorn cuttings from the hedges.

On a couple of nights in late August, the temperatures took a dip to 4C which sent the squashes into heavy mildew on the leaves. With a 50/50 mix of sun and grey skies we opted to remove the white wash on the greenhouse to give the tomatoes a better chance of ripening and hopefully not scorch the leaves too much. The September forecast remained warm but with plenty of showers until the 17th when the first widespread ground frost was predicted.

I planted up pots, tubs and baskets of violas to take over from the summer annuals as the frost would kill them off. I prefer violas to pansies as they stay in better shape by Spring. Frost also brings an untimely end to runner beans and dahlias and brings autumn/winter forward making the winter months too long and our precious bees will suffer more. Late summer borders in the garden are beautiful and are important to bees which must store up supplies for winter at this time. If it gets too cold too quickly, they will not have enough stores to survive. The more people who can take up bee-keeping the better.

My new RSPB bird table with wide roof proved very successful at keeping the pigeons and crows away, while the greenfinches, great tits, blue tits and gold finches thought it was terrific and paused there for 5 minutes at a time. Further up the garden, the apple trees started to drop their produce as the autumn winds gathered strength. The young 3 way multi-tree did well on 2 of its types but the Egremont Russet tree produced small fruits and needed more thinning of the fruits earlier in the season. The late September sun kept the geraniums blooming well until the wet and gusty weather in the first week of October. Some people keep them over winter, but I find they are not as good in the second year, and usually don’t bother.

Before starting to do any major cutting down at the end of the season, it is time to collect seeds from the summer flowering plants and vegetables. Many plants produce viable seeds and in these cost-constrained days, it is well worth buying a packet of small brown envelopes and taking a trip round your garden with a pen in your hand and writing on the packets as you find seeds to save. There is nothing more rewarding to a gardener than free seed producing next year’s goodies!

A garden needs some later flowering plants and I always like to have something for the Autumn Show in mid October. The roses produced a good second flush, the phlox has a second burst of life, the aconitums always produce their fine, rich, purple heads at this time and the late yellow flowering daisies at 5’ tall have the upper garden to themselves in this late season. The Michaelmas daisies are also reliable, provided you stake the weaker varieties, and the dahlias were still producing good blooms. Even the zinnias and penstomens still had new spikes of flowers on them. Grouped together these all make a colourful late display in the borders while in the dry garden, the sedum looks majestic and was regularly visited by butterflies and insects as a late feeding station.

The trial of letting the nasturtiums grow up as second time proved very successful, and a tub of lovely flowers was to be seen by my front door in mid October. I had only added water to the congested tub, so this was a real bonus.

The season of leaf collecting, filling compost bins and bonfires was upon us all too quickly and the first frosts take their toll of the garden. When all the clearing up is done, the tools cleaned and put away, and the garden reduced to its skeletal structure for winter, the only thing left to do is review the photos you took of the garden this year and plan for next year. Time for a glass of that sloe gin I made last year, I think

Happy Christmas.