gardening

Life in a Cottage Garden with Carol Kleine episode 6 – Into Winter: In November and December, the first frosts have struck. It’s time to put away tender perennials, begin judicious cutting-back and sweep up the fallen leaves.     The garden is laid bare, but beauty is still found in the skeletal structures of fading plants. Holly, box and yew reveal their evergreen glory and the perfume of viburnum and mahonia tempt insects still bravely on the wing. In the woodland garden, under the leaf-litter, the first snowdrops are already beginning to appear. As Carol plants her tulip bulbs,

Life in a Cottage Garden with Carol Kleine episode 5 – Autumn: With the onset of September and October, the atmosphere in the garden is rich with the smell of ripening fruit and wood smoke.     It’s harvest time so there are seeds to collect, pricking out to be completed and tidying to be done. Carol’s daughters, Annie and Alice, are home to help decide the fate of the cankered apple tree. And Carol has to prepare the garden for visitors to her Open Garden Scheme day. As October comes to an end the leaves turn russet, amber and

Life in a Cottage Garden with Carol Kleine episode 4 – High Summer: In July and August the garden is building to a peak. Flowers are at their very brightest and most beautiful with geraniums abounding and the fragrance of lilies pervading the garden. To keep the garden looking glorious, there is staking to be done, roses to deadhead and cuttings of asters to take.     Carol sets to work in her hot borders. She plants out the castor oil plants, grown from seed, and places cannas, gingers and dahlias to create an exotic, hot, explosion of colour. Carol

Life in a Cottage Garden with Carol Kleine episode 3 – Spring into Summer: In May and June, everything in the garden is surging forwards, full of exuberance. Rather than sitting back to enjoy it all, Carol is planting out sweet peas, picking the first salad leaves and staking perennials.     Blossom drips from the trees, the woodland garden is carpeted with bluebells, and primal ferns begin to unfold. Carol’s opulent oriental poppies pop their hats in the early summer heat and, as the welcome hum of insects returns to the garden, Carol and husband Neil take delivery of

Life in a Cottage Garden with Carol Kleine episode 2: March and April is a time of huge change in the garden, as the remnants of winter make way for the hope of spring. Carol is busy clearing away the last of the winter detritus to make way for waves of planting. There’s pruning to be done, and she sows the first seeds of the year. Snowdrops are replaced by celandines and violets, and along the lanes and hedgerows, primroses abound.     A local hedge pruner, who has come to cloud prune Carol’s box hedge, finds his work interrupted

Life in a Cottage Garden with Carol Kleine episode 1 – Winter has come… harsh frosts have shattered Carol’s tulip pots, and her brick paths are ruined. Carol takes shelter in the potting shed and prepares her garlic for spring planting. On finer days, she begins pruning late-flowering clematis, and when the thaw comes she begins a major re-vamp in the borders.     As the long dark days pass, the first green shoots of the new year appear. First it is snowdrops in ones and twos, and then in drifts, carpeting the woodland floor. These are then followed by