Garden treasure

THIS year, autumn has lived up to its title ‘the royal season’ for it was mild and pleasant in the main and wore a coat of many colours.

It prepares us for winter in the fall of leaves, a cooling of the air, and a shortening of daylight. And now that we are into winter it is often, regrettably, associated with melancholy and nostalgia. But winter can also be welcomed as one of our most rewarding seasons. The blowsy exuberance of summer is certainly gone, but texture, shape and form emerge as if an artist had suddenly uncovered a forgotten charcoal sketch beneath a current painting.

For the gardener, winter can be a treasured period, a time of surrender, of lengthening shadows and quiet reflection, broken only by the scream of high winds as they move through tree canopies and shriek about chimney pots.