My client’s garden today after a good autumn tidy…rather wonderful box caterpillar on the right…

And four bags of debris and composting to show for it…note the super mature olive tree on the left thriving in mediterranean Cambridge!

And I love this stained glass tower…

Happy November gardening!

This is how my one of my Client’s garden was when I arrived and started work in April this year – overgrown and neglected borders with unsupported young trees struggling to survive, and soil that was in very poor condition having had no nutrients for six years.  Everything was very sad and dishevelled and crying out for some proper ‘tlc’.

Six months on, and a lot of hard weekly work later, and we now have an ordered bed.  Trees are now properly staked and supported, the soil is massively improvement, worthy shrubs have been retained and pruned, weeds and general detritis and failing plants have been removed, and a mass of new planting has been carefully planted up, including many ornamental grasses and good hard-working perennials like japanese anemones, hellebores, hardy geraniums, persicaria and verbena bonariensis.  It’s beginning to look like a real garden at last…..

This is Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Taurus’ and Anemanthele lessoniana awaiting delivery to a client’s garden – the rusty reds of both plants compliment each other nicely.

Yesterday I was tending the new grasses border planted at my clients’ garden – this one features Miscanthus sinensis, Stipa gigantea, Stipa tennuissima and Anemanthele lessoniana, interplanted with Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’, Acanthus spinosa, Phlomis fruticosa and russelinia and Hemerocallis, as well as Tulip ‘Ballerina’ for spring – a fiery border dominated by yellows and oranges and then fading into the straw and tawny shades of grasses in Autumn through to silvery Winter.  And this is how it looked yesterday – above and below.

Today I have been working on a client’s garden that was very neglected.  It looked like this on arrival (although even this isn’t quite before I’d started, because this is after I tied in all the trees properly to their stakes, from which they had all parted company in infancy to the detriment of their growing shape, alas)

And now things are getting better, we have some order out of the weeds and chaos, and big plans for new plantings this autumn.

Today is looks like this, with weeds cleared, lawn edged and plants given some tender loving care.