Through the garden gate in January

Once a month I am planning to welcome you through the garden gate and into the garden. For the first in this series to entice you in, I have stolen an image of the gate that opens into what used to be my Granny's garden, you can see why it is my sort of gate!

The monthly post will shows the highlights and also when things haven't gone quite according to plan! This border backs on to the fields and is next to our seating area, under the grapevine. We decided to create a blue, white and yellow border using catmint, daises, white foxgloves and alchemilla mollis.

January 2016

August 2015

It wasn't as colourful as we hoped so we will be adding more yellow and silver plants to it this year to make it more eye catching. Our plan was to enjoy the afternoon winter sun shining through the grasses as the sun set, it worked last winter but now look at the grass!

Something has shredded it. They have discovered grasses are a wonderful thing to attack - can you guess who?

Yes it was Twinkle! Unfortunately, she hasn't been very well for sometime. She occasionally has problems with breathing (it's a bit like asthma) and we have to control it by injections. Somedays she is better than others, so it is good to see her having fun playing outside even if it ruins our garden plans!

The flowers highlights this month are the purple coloured periwinkle and the hellebores. We even have some annual wallflowers coming into flower. It was a joy to pick the first bunch of flowers from the garden and enjoy them indoors.

In the vegetable garden we have leeks, spinach and kale growing, none of which are very large.
They have been battered so much by the winter storms. We have been picking salad leaves from the greenhouse all winter and we also have kale and strawberries growing in here.

Our herbaceous border has been battered by the winds too, and with so much rain there hasn't been the opportunity to get outside and sort it out. The front of the euphorbia wulfenii has been blown over. Although it is now too big for here, we will wait until it has flowered before taking it out. At least we haven't had plants completely blown out of the ground like some of our neighbours! Do you have any highlights of failures in your garden in January?

Heavy rain early on Friday morning caused the local rivers to burst their banks flooding the surrounding areas, it was fortunate that the sun came out at lunch time and with the sluice gates fully open into the harbour the excess water was soon dispersed.