There's been much cutting back in the garden over the last few weeks, and everywhere is starting to look bare and wintry. I love the garden and outdoors in the winter. There's something very satisfying in all the clearing and tidying up; getting everything ready for the cold months ahead and looking forward to the spring and new growth.
I am always delighted when my thoughts chime with a favourite writer, and Vita Sackville-West wrote about the November garden at her Kent home, Sissinghurst.
"If it is true that one of the greatest pleasures of gardening lies in looking forward, then the planning of next year's beds and borders must be one of the most agreeable occupations in the gardener's calendar. This should make October and November particularly pleasant months, for then we may begin to clear our borders, to cut down those sodden and untidy stalks, to dig up and increase our plants, and to move them to other positions where they will show up to greater effect. People who are not gardeners always say that the bare beds of winter are uninteresting; gardeners know better, and take even a certain pleasure in the neatness of the newly dug, bare, brown earth."
I am always delighted when my thoughts chime with a favourite writer, and Vita Sackville-West wrote about the November garden at her Kent home, Sissinghurst.
"If it is true that one of the greatest pleasures of gardening lies in looking forward, then the planning of next year's beds and borders must be one of the most agreeable occupations in the gardener's calendar. This should make October and November particularly pleasant months, for then we may begin to clear our borders, to cut down those sodden and untidy stalks, to dig up and increase our plants, and to move them to other positions where they will show up to greater effect. People who are not gardeners always say that the bare beds of winter are uninteresting; gardeners know better, and take even a certain pleasure in the neatness of the newly dug, bare, brown earth."