I hope you enjoy these late December images from my own and gardens I work in.

  • Veronicastrum standing tall
  • Contorted Hazel, Artichoke and Secateurs
  • Mulberry and box
  • Borage as a mulch with cotoneaster berries
  • Ornamental grasses at home
  • Japanese anemone stems against roses
  • Veroniscastrum, Pheasant Grass and Copper Beech at home.
  • Veronicastrum
  • Miscanthus and Aster
  • Cotinus Coggygria against winter blue sky

I read extensively around the subject of Landscape Architecture and Garden Design. If you are looking for one reference book to start your library collection, I would recommend Piet Oudolf’s and Noel Kingsbury’s “Planting a New Perspective”. In which they share their immense knowledge and understanding of ecology, design, and plants performances over time. There are original planting plans, and a very comprehensive plant directory. Year after year it continues to be the most read learning resource in my library.

  • You can
  • Never have
  • Enough Books !

Winter gardening conversations continue along the same lines every year with a few customers “ Sally, why are you leaving all those bare dead stems in the garden ? It would look so much neater if you cut them back” So I do, and then their gardens really do look dead and bare.

At home, my garden is full of spent perennial flower stems with sturdy seed heads. Ornamental grasses have turned the colour of melted butter, they look beautiful. I won’t be cutting anything back for another month or two, as the stems provide food and shelter for the passing wildlife, and add structure and movement to the garden. The garden is often full of birdsong, and provides great photographic opportunities throughout the year. I consider it to be winter perfect.

  • Lounge window views

Obviously, there are times over winter, when it is just too wet to be outside gardening. Thankfully all is not lost on the self employed income generation front.

I have started to combine the art of floral design into my working week. Creating natural winter decorations, makes me very happy, particularly when I know I can work inside in the dry.

I wish you all a great 2020, and very much hope you will continue to join me on my horticultural and floristry adventures as I work,write, travel and learn.

To finish my last blog of the year, I have chosen my favourite image, and consider this to be the worthy winner for 2019.

It was the light coming through the velvet-like stems of Tithonia that
made this my favourite image.