All the fun of an auction
This is my favourite time of year and at the moment I’m enjoying the changing leaf colours of trees and shrubs in the garden. Cercidiphyllum japonicum or, as we refer to it, the ‘candyfloss tree’, is a favourite at the moment. The leaf colour is beautiful and even better is the scent from its leaves that wafts across the garden on sunny days. We recently spent a day at a tree and shrub auction and got slightly carried away! We went just to have a look, but soon acquired a lovely Acer palmatum ‘Sango-kaku’ . By the time we’d finished, the car was full to bursting with cornus, hydrangeas and prunus, not to mention five more fine acer specimens! We’ll have fun finding space for all these, and plenty more autumn colour to look forward to.
Sometimes as you progress with a job, you find, as we have, that plans can change. Alongside our drive is a large raised bed edged with a brick wall that’s looked unsafe for years. It is also next to a large concrete area in front of the garage where we put our small greenhouse when we first moved here. We decided to take down the brick wall around part of the raised bed and rebuild it, making the bed smaller, with the intention of making space for the greenhouse off the concrete. However, having dug out earth from the raised bed to a depth of around two feet to get down to the level of the concrete, we have come across a small bricked area. Unfortunately it’s too narrow to house the greenhouse, so this will now just be moved a short distance to the edge of the concrete, and we’ll use the bricked area as a feature, maybe with a large pot on it.
Tales from a Country Garden 