Susie shares her plans for a year of inspiration, travel and working alongside nature
WORDS: SUSIE WHITE; WWW.SUSIE-WHITE.CO.UK, @COTTAGEGARDENER. PHOTOGRAPHS: SUSIE WHITE
A New Year of Gardening!
Welcome back to Susie’s Garden and a brilliant gardening year! Join me as I tend the flowers and vegetables in the colourful borders around my North Pennine home.
I’ll visit other gardens for inspiration and give tips on growing a wide range of plants. I’ll show how to encourage wildlife and produce a harvest for healthy eating. I take all photographs myself and will describe what I’m doing in my own garden, a real place with challenges and successes.
So many readers have followed my garden over the years and I’m warmed by the letters I receive. But if you are new to my column, let me describe where I garden. I live in a small upland valley, surrounded by woods and fields, where it can be very cold in winter, very hot in summer.
It was as an example of extremes of temperature that my garden was shown on BBC Gardeners’ World! Plants have to be resilient. I mix perennials, bulbs, annuals and containers.
The flower garden’s four gravel paths cross in the middle where there are four beautiful topiary yew domes. I grew them all from seedlings and it’s taken patience to train them, as well as several other large topiary shapes. The paths divide the garden into four huge borders planted with big drifts to create an undulating sea of colour and texture.
Behind the house is the vegetable garden, where my husband David grows a wealth of delicious organic produce. With terraces and water features, trees and shrubs, a wildflower meadow and a lawn, all we do is with nature firmly in mind.
Easy Bulbs
It will soon be Easter and the garden centres will be busy.
Look out for summer bulbs to plant now and add vibrant colour to your garden later on. Lilies are showy and exotic, canna lilies have a tropical feel or there are delicate trietlia or sumptuous gladioli which are good as cut flowers.
Grow Cut Flowers
Something I particularly value about my garden is being able to pick my own flowers.
There’s something every month of the year, and in winter it might be hazel branches or snowdrops in bud.
