I am slightly late this year in starting to revue how the garden performed during 2022. Looking back at previous years blogs, documented month by month, I realise it is probably becoming a bit boring, as in comparing each month with that of the year before there is frequently very little change.
To be honest, because I don’t add to the blog each month, just annually, it can get very tedious and time consuming to write it up! I do however, keep a weekly diary (RHS 5 year Garden Diary) which I do keep written up.
The weather may have some influence over which plants are in bloom, which shrubs are flowering or when the leaves of the tree change to their Autumn colour, but by and large the gardening year stays much the same.
Over a longer period of years, we do notice changes – which may be slightly more obvious from reading my very first blog and comparing it with the very last one. I think we can all agree that 2022 was a very strange one weather-wise which ended up with some very confused plants. Most notably the summer drought left us struggling to keep plants alive and sadly we lost some. We ended up taking our hanging baskets down and emptying pots of annuals earlier than usual.
We eventually had a hosepipe ban and watering with a watering can became a nightly routine! Fortunately we have 6 large water butts, but even they ran dry. We do also have a very large sealed water storage tank which we can pump surplus rain water into, and then refill our water butts from when required.
In late summer, due to lack of rainfall, our oak tree went into Autumn mode, many of its leaves turned brown and fell off, but then when September turned wet, that process stopped completely and the rest of the leaves remained green, then going into its normal Autumn pattern. We did, however, have amazing crops of apples and pears – picking and eating our last Braeburns in early November. Plums were reasonable but the damson crop was poor.
Just before Christmas we also had an early and unexpected fall of fairly heavy snow on the Sunday evening, accompanied by freezing conditions which lasted a week. With the below freezing temperatures and snow and ice laying on the plants, this has definitely resulted in some further plant casualties.
I think that it won’t be until Spring that we see exactly which plants (other than those that definitely died) that have survived and are in good health. I have already noticed though, that our standard Photinia, which has definitely been under stress and lost all its leaves, is just beginning to show signs of life – it is not written off yet!
So here we are, coming towards the end of Winter, the Snowdrops, Hellebores, early Camellias and Witch Hazel are flowering, daffs and crocus are poking through the soil, there are small shoots and buds on climbers and shrubs and reminding us of the gardening year to come.
HAPPY GARDENING!