Taking Stock

Horse grazing on nearby marais

The month of October sees our landscape slip inexorably from late summer into autumn.  Heavy rainfall seemed to start earlier than usual this year, interfering with the grape harvest (vendange), leaving trails of mud on the road from freshly ploughed fields.

Egret amongst sea asters

But gusty winds soon dry the reedbeds and grassy marais, blowing through waves of sea asters along the shore, tossing their fluffy seedheads in the bright light and sending up fine wisps of spiders' silk to travel on air currents and catch on your clothes in passing.

Now's the time to take stock in the garden: pruning and shredding offcuts of woody shrubs; chopping down herbaceous stems and adding them to the compost heap.  (It's a good idea to turn the heap beforehand so that it's fully activated and ready to go!)

A couple of gardening enthusiasts, Jane and Stuart, spent a morning performing some necessary surgery on our tall ash trees, carefully manoeuvering the heavy branches with ropes to avoid any collateral damage.

They did a fine job and filled our log shed with an ample supply of fuel for our two open fires and the woodburning stove.

Christina will tell you that the sight of a well-packed log shed is as pleasing as a fully-stocked fridge!

Once the clearing up has been accomplished, you get a better sense of what plants might need dividing and replanting.  As the soil is warm and moist, it's a great opportunity to move almost anything and I look for the odd space to cram in some spring bulbs, perhaps overplanting them with ground-cover such as aubretia or Campanula poscharskyana - both of which root easily from cuttings at this time of year.

Two varieties of Cyclamen hederifolium have recently come into flower under the ash trees and their elegant blooms really glow against the dark background of leaf-litter. 

It's interesting that their marbled leaves don't really appear until March and I see from looking at my picture files that the white variety has a different leaf shape and markings to the pink one.  

Pink on the left and White on the right!

Both are very pretty and provide eye-catching colour in a dry woodland area where little else will thrive.

Although many shrubs are notable for their foliage right now, I'm nominating the understated - but never underrated - Eleagnus x ebbingei as my Shrub of the Month. 

We recently planted several as a hedge in the front south-facing garden where they have to withstand salty winds off the estuary.  They thrived through our dry summer and two of them have just rewarded us with small, beautifully fragrant flowers which are almost hidden under the greyish-green felted leaves.  Their scent is all the more mysterious because the uninitiated can't see where it's coming from; but I have yet to capture its essence on camera, so you'll just have to trust me that Eleagnus makes an excellent hedging plant.

Meanwhile, those purple salvias are still flowering their socks off in the herb bed and, until a recent rainy spell, were continuing to attract nectar-seeking insects.

Clouded-yellow butterfly

We've almost finished planting up this new bed with a variety of herbs and edging plants and I have a small area set aside for lavender cuttings, thinking ahead to next year when there'll be a need for fresh plants along the driveway.  I've also filled my cold frame with seedlings which I'm hoping to over-winter and plant out in spring... always assuming there's any space left!