The Mitcheldean Garden 2025
Bowing to the Inevitable

This page is part of a series of garden blogs from 2025. Click here for the index.

Ever since the pandemic, we have been fighting a losing battle against invading deer who have ruined our front garden. This year we have also had to battle the weather which denied us rain for months on end and near destroyed the supporting cast of other flowering plants. Of course, the rain returned eventually but the damage had been done and by then we had decided a revamp was needed. 

There is still no sign of the sale of #31 moving to completion (and now #29 is back on the market) which means that Yuehong has been able to enjoy a glut of their eating apples, nationally it's been a great year for fruit trees. It's no time at all before we leave for Penang and their grass has had one cut all summer long and our common border has just had a partial cut from me because otherwise the Buddleia and Forsythia would have taken a week to cut back next spring instead of a couple of days.

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For the last few weeks, Yuehong had been regularly inspecting the apples on her own baby Braeburn, uncertain when to pick them and, when she could wait no more, a sample clearly indicated that the answer was 'not yet'. She needn't have worried, the birds knew and one morning she found a couple had been 'pecked' and a few minutes later the whole crop had vanished into the kitchen where they didn't last long.

For us, there is just one inescapable sign of peak autumn, our little Acer is a star for a week. I've looked back at more than 10 years and it always turns in mid October. It's clearly decided by day length because rain or shine it's within a few days, the exact day has no significance as I wait for the first sunny day to record it. This year October has been dry but overcast and I had to grab the camera and dash outside in the middle of breakfast! Around a week earlier I took a farewell picture of the front flower bed, behind even the 'bungalow roses' are in trouble, we have put the wooden part of the greenhouse racks in place to try to discourage the unwanted browsers.

For some years it has been apparent that these beds are actually unsuitable for azaleas, they grow very slowly and have been increasingly covered in 'growth'. Interestingly, those on the banks at the back which get rather more sun do not share the problems. So out came everything and I spent a morning digging over the beds and in the afternoon Yuehong planted three rows of bulbs. From left to right are yellow tulips, red tulips and hyacinths. The first two are better described as theoretical owing to my notoriously bad record keeping and the while it's difficult to get the hyacinths wrong, it's really just a case of going through the motions to keep them alive as history suggest they will be finished before we return. In the foreground are some more of the '35 bed dahlias' in flower at last, on the left is the first bud from the 'local champion', it's running two months late this year!

This year's snapdragons were effectively a failure because of the dry weather so Yuehong plans to allocate some space on the patio so they can go in tubs, just where the tubs will go is another matter!!! Climate change has reached Mitcheldean and when you throw in the effects of inflation and our own ageing it all means we have to make adjustments

This is the new home for the small azaleas where I have dug out two beds just below the summer house which proved unsuitable for roses, with or without the deer.  We have 'cone flowers' next to the summer house. They haven't grown very tall this year but they have lots of smaller than usual flowers. 

Normally this would have been our main dahlia bed in the early part of the season but at that time this year there wasn't a single flower to be seen. Only in the last couple of weeks have I been tempted to bring the camera here, a quick comparison with previous years will show some of my 'favourite' blooms to be missing, they seem to have died of exhaustion, we just don't have sufficient suitable beds to rotate them as we would like to.

The purple and white ones and the pom-poms on the other hand have fared rather better. This giant orange one has been lurking in the bed near the summer house for several years but only now that the gum tree has gone and more sun reaches the bed do I know which kind it is! If we get a better summer next year, maybe it will match its sibling in the '35 bed', it's certainly well ahead of it at the moment.

In front of it, Yuehong's lily bed never showed its full potential. With her agreement, I have now dug it up completely ,what happens next is up for discussion. There might even be some dahlias here next summer, but for the time being Yuehong has 'laced' it with 'mixed tulips' being healthy specimens which I failed to label properly after flowering.

Next we have to prepare the patio, The geraniums are already away in the greenhouse, they will be followed by the smaller (patio and dwarf) dahlias and regular and dwarf begonias. We leave this as late as possible because it's difficult to move around inside it after. And, when there is sufficient space, we plant up dozens of newly bought ('Lidl'') tulips in large pots which should be about to open when we get back. 

Sadly, the salvia, African marigolds and busy lizzie are very much annuals and will be left to their fate. Currently they provide the back drop to breakfast. Note the early Christmas fairy lights, we even have seasonal music in the background too! Penang feels like a million miles away...

That's it for 2025, click here for the 2025 index.