I love gardening in October. For me the month provides an opportunity to still do lots of things in the garden, to eek out the last bits of interest and colour. But October is also a time to do or think about things which will make the garden even better next year.
You’re sort of poised on a gardening crossroads, enjoying the year you’re in plus planning for the year to come. The best of both worlds – I love it!
To show you what I mean, here’s what’s filling my gardening brain for this October.
Gardening in October – Jobs to Keep Things Going
Deadheading
To keep the garden looking as good as I can for as long as I can, I’m still deadheading. In particular I’m deadheading the roses, which are still rewarding me with some fresh blooms. They might not be quite as potent as the flowers I had earlier in the year, but they’re still lovely.
Wildeve – which I took cuttings from last week – for instance is till throwing up a lot of blooms, as is my favourite, Jacqueline du Pre (below). She’s flowering her socks off at the moment and I’m doing all I can to keep her going.
I’m also keeping my pots and containers looking as fresh as possible.
This mainly involves removing any dead heads from heucheras which might be marring an otherwise fresh-ish looking display.
Though I leave the spent heads on my clematis as I think they look pretty.
Weeding & Leaf Mould
As the beds and borders lose some of their blooms, my eye is really drawn to what else is lurking in among the plants and which may be making the beds look scruffy – weeds!
So I’m pulling up weeds to keep the beds tidy. To further keep the weeds at bay and improve the soil, I’m going to then put down some of my leaf mould which I created last year. It will supress the weeds and condition the soil.
The reason I will do this now is that I want to free up the sacks, so that I can use them for this year’s leaves, when they fall.
Grass Seed
I’m not a very good at lawn care – in fact I’m rubbish at it. My lawn is 95% anything but grass, and frankly I don’t care too much. However, I’ve got some bare patches where I removed expanses of moss which had taken hold. So I’m chucking down a bit of grass seed which I found in the shed. I’m working on the basis of nothing ventured nothing gained! If it works, great!
Although I sound very casual about this, October is actually a good time to put down lawn seed as the soil is moist and still warm. So I’m hopeful it will take. But I’m not doing much more than that on the lawn front. So if you want more detailed advice on lawn care, I’d probably check out this lawn care advice from Gardener’s World.
Bluebells
I’m also going to plant some more bluebells. 25-49% of the world’s English bluebell population is in the British Isles, so we are key custodians of this noble plant. And every year I plant a few more to help keep it that way.
Over the past few years, thanks to successive September/October plantings, I’ve created a sort of bluebell glade. This runs around the edge of our Beech tree towards where we store our dustbins. Very glamorous I hear you say!
The glade effect is building nicely but I think it needs one more year of new bulbs. So my gardening in October will include planting a further 100 of the beauties. That possibly sounds like a lot but they really don’t go that far!
If like me, you fancy planting bluebells please note that English bluebells are hyacinthoides non-scripta. They’re protected in the wild and are at risk of being out-competed by the Spanish type (Hyacinthoides hispanica) or a hybrid (Hyacinthoides x massartiana) which garden centres often sell. So do make sure you get the correct English bluebells.
Bluebells are really a woodland plant. They like partial shade, but will tolerate a bit of sun. So, to protect the bluebells I already have, I’ll pop a bit of my good old leaf mould on them as October progresses, to mimic the woodland floor.
Sedum
I’ve a large amount of Sedum Autumn Joy in my sunny border. It was planted in two clumps. Last year I divided one clump, spreading the resultant divided plants through the border. As a result it has looked much better this year.
So I need to do the same with the second clump (below) which is splaying in a most unsightly way.
Gardening in October – Planning for the Year Ahead
As I mentioned at the start of this blog, gardening in October, to me, also means planning for the year ahead. And this year I have some serious planning to do. This is for two, inter-connected reasons.
My regular readers may recall that while I have a lovely potting shed which is all mine, we also have two extremely ugly sheds at the bottom of our garden. They store all sorts of kit and caboodle.
Over the years I’ve learned to make the best of them. I’ve created mini box-framed beds in front of them to soften their ugliness. I’ve also put decorative pots on their walls. But, if I’m honest, they still look very unsightly.
The good news is that Mr F-W, who uses these sheds, has had enough of them. Hurrah! He wants to get rid of half his ‘stuff’ and consolidate things.
He loves old wood, old latches, old slates, window frames, stone etc. When building our house or working on others’ homes these things were put to great use. But now that he’s retired, all this stuff is sitting there.
Added to all this, we also accumulated a mass of old kit we used with our four kids. A tug of war rope, three sets of old wooden skittles, tents, rucksacks, dart boards (yes we’ve more than one), gym weights, a punch bag, rowing machine, no end of sports paraphernalia. You get the gist.
Mr F-W as I said has called time on all this hoarding. He wants to have one, tidy shed with his work bench and essentials in it, and get rid of the other two which in addition to being ugly, are falling down.
So for the past few months he has been building a gorgeous new shed (of course he would, there was no way he was buying one off the shelf!) It’s not suite finished but is already an absolute thing of beauty, with reconditioned old windows, a little metal roof. I think it’s fab, both from the outside and, as you can see below, from the inside too!
Planning planting near the new shed
The new shed is located near our semi-shaded flower bed, not far from where the bluebell glade runs. So planning job number one for me is thinking about how I incorporate planting near the new shed.
I’m a big believer in getting used to a space before you make big decisions. So for now I’ll simply plant up a couple of big containers to reside either side of the new shed’s door. The pots will be in shade, so I’ll need shade tolerant plants.
But longer term I could have more elaborate plans:
- Ultimately the front of the shed would be an ideal spot for a flourish of snowdrops perhaps.
- I could extend my bluebell glade to the shed
- Maybe I want to infer a pathway to the shed by having two informal lines of planting
- I could grow a climber on the shed (not ivy as I’ve plenty of that elsewhere)
- Hanging baskets might work?
- An old bench might look sweet in front of it
- I could create a bed in front of the shed
- Or the lawn in front could be a mini meadow with grass path cut through it – it is bit shaded though
As you can see, there’s lots for me to ponder and plan – and I love it.
Planning for where the old sheds are
Once the new shed is up, the two old sheds will come down. Mr F-W suggests this might be by the end of March.
This will open up for me a whole new area of garden to design up.
Backed by a Cotswold stone wall, it’s potentially a large area. About 12 feet deep and 40-50ft long. It’s a sunny area and will give me so many possibilities. But I must proceed with caution, as until the sheds are down I can’t quite appreciate how different things will look.
Here’s some of my thinking…which doesn’t equal a formal plan, but shows how my brain is working and all the things I need to consider
- We’d like another seating area
- We will have a different view of our trees, especially the Ash in front of the shed, and the wonderful old Robinia to the right of the concrete shed. So mustn’t make hasty decisions until we know how all that looks
- The left hand shed’s floor is below ground – do we leave it at that level
- The revealed stone wall will be handsome – needs to be a feature
- We will want some form of screening to provide privacy for us and our lovely neighbours Coral and John who live the other side of that wall
- A water feature would be nice
- A greenhouse would be nice
- Another sunny border would be lovely
- There are plants already in front of the sheds or next to them – honeysuckles and roses on the sheds, box hedging, peonies, a bay tree…do we incorporate or move them
Gardening in October
I think you can see why I love gardening in October. It’s that heady combination of doing practical tasks and day-dreaming. My very definition of happy gardening x