Being a self employed gardener means I am no “fair weather ” worker. It has on occasion been a bit cold and wet ( well it is winter) but with the correct clothing I have been perfectly happy pruning, planting, propagating and digging my way through 30 hours of gardening each week.

My favourite beanie hat.
winter layers
clean, dry gloves – it must be the start of my working week .

Working in my own garden during winter is an entirely different matter. The last couple of weekends, have been too wet to do any practical work outside. I truly love spending time in my garden and I’m waiting for an entirely dry day to get stuck in. Fruit trees need pruning, my allotment needs a visit, and all the perennial borders need to be inspected, so that I can decide which plants are keepers, and what might be heading off to customers gardens as “gifts “. This latter task is really important, as my seed order arrived today. There are 22 packets of annual and perennial flowering loveliness that will need sowing over the next few months. I definitely need to make some space…

There are some stunnng flowers to be sown and grown.
I think these will be an interesting experiment.
Last years spares – you can never have too many seeds.

Even though it has been a really wet and cold today, I felt the need to take a walk around my garden. Some might say it resembles a heap of old dead stems, I would beg to differ, and I continue to find it incredibly interesting to look at, I might just leave it for another week or two before I cut them back.

Scottish thistle
Aster seed heads
Biennials , that might need replanting to provide more growing space for this years new plants.
Calamagrotis x acutiflora Karl Foerster

Many a foxglove seed was sown in late August 2020. I thought I had timed my propagation to perfection, in that they would germinate, form a good root and basal leaves prior to their winter dormancy, and then my garden in 2021 would be full of Digitalis. Sadly this was not the case, as I sowed the seeds to late . However my expectations for 2022 will be dozens of very tall and very floriferous stems. I believe they will be well worth waiting for.

growing on
Ceratotheca triloba , sown last year. If its anything like the flower image on the packet , it will be stunning.
Digitalis mertensis ( I think)

And to finish off, this is the anniversary for my blogging – nine whole years and 231 WordPress blog posts later, all about my gardening life, and I hope you have enjoyed this one.