October 2017 / more chronicles / START

The pictures are from this summer, see more pictures here

Pictures January

January 2018

Greetings to all my gardening friends and amateur gardeners everywhere. The date is Sunday, 28th January and I’m sitting here in front of a roaring fire with a glass of white wine in hand. Here in the Stockholm area, the light is slowly but surely returning as we approach the end of January, and I’ve been going through seed catalogues and planning for the coming season. What would life be without plans, without something to look forward to?

There’s obviously not a lot happening in the garden at present, but I’m itching to start doing things in a month or so. The crocuses are beginning to show themselves; they’ve already reached a couple of centimetres above ground. But we can almost certainly expect a few setbacks before the spring finally arrives. Take the opportunity to go to your local library and borrow as many gardening books as possible. That’s a great way of getting new ideas. Last season I had the idea of putting a couple of 2.5 m high poles in the ground and planting climbing roses which hopefully will grow up and cover the poles. If it succeeds, it will be fantastic. I got the idea when visiting Powis Castle in Wales last year.

During the coming season, I’ll be planting a bit more boxwood  (buxus sempervirens), specifically to replace the Yellow Fairy roses in the parterre in the front garden, which have not succeeded. I will also be going around the garden and making sure that all roses and clematis are raised up so that it’s possible to go around the garden without problems.

This time of the year plenty of birds are visiting our garden. Every day robins, blackbirds and bluetits are at the birdfeeders. We have also had the occational surprise visit of swans.

We will be standing at the Easter market at Vårsta on 24 March (12-15:00), which is held at Vårstavi in Grödinge, and we will also be participating in Tusen Trädgårdar (Thousand Gardens) 2018, on 1 July and in Enköping’s garden market on 1 September.

We will also be opening the garden to members of our bulb club several times during the season. It would be nice to see you then.

All the best,
Stefan, A Gentleman Gardner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

domherre, robin

domherre, robin

kotrast, backbird

koltrast, backbird