Jobs in our cottage garden in January 2021

Garden Diary January 2021

Our cottage garden is a constant source of design inspiration for me. My aim is to have it full of flowers and colour during the year. I have no training in gardening, just learning along the way. I am going to keep a diary of the jobs that I do and record what is successful or not.

I hope you find it interesting and please share your ideas with me. You can use the Contact Lucy Erridge on this site or on our social media https://www.instagram.com/lucyerridge_adare/?hl=en or https://www.facebook.com/lucyerridgeadare . Happy gardening for 2021.

I only have a few days that I can work in the garden as we are not open due to covid 19 and I want to restrict my travel.

This work was undertaken before full lock down and before the frost but everything survived the frost. I painted a few watercolour sketches of the robin, who was keen to help, and the garden.

Jobs – things that need doing now

Cut back the dead leaves and stems –(Should have done pre-Christmas) – we used clippers and secateurs so that we didn’t pull the living roots out of the ground. Any plants that did get pulled up with roots I popped into a pot to see if they would take root there.
pull out any weeds while we were clearing. You can see the amount of debris we took away.
Scraped off some of the moss from walls and pots – it tends to take over if I don’t restrict it, but I do like to leave some.
clearing and tidying should allow the sun in and stop rotting vegetation lying on top of new growth.
empty the water trays from under plant pots of the rotting leaves and water. Stack them away for later in the year. The water just soaks the roots of the plants in the pots – should have done this pre-Christmas too.

Plants – the plants growing now

We uncovered a surprising amount of new growth –

bulbs – bluebells, daffodils and hyacinths.
Sedum were growing new shoots.
Columbines growing (from last year’s plants- I will grow more from seeds this year)
Hellebore had a flower bud. I did plant some more Hellebores from my mother’s garden last year but haven’t seen any sign of them yet.
Cerinthe were coming up in the edge of the gravel which seems to be where they prefer to grow – they self seed each year (they know what’s best for them).
Iris bulbs had a lot of leaf and look healthy – green and strong.
There were new shoots one of the lupin plants too.
Quite a lot of growth on the poppies.

St Fiachra Patron Saint of Gardeners

Notes

I used to have a few snow drops but we changed one part of the garden last year and they might not have survived – will think of a new place to try some over the year.

The artichoke was at least 18 inches high which isn’t normal – it is usually only just starting to show. It is a sheltered garden but this is not what I normally see at this time of year.

Plans

I have a bit of planning to do now which I will share next. I need to plan which seeds I want to grow and which areas of the garden I am going to work on this year. Lots to do.

The front bed with some of my many pots.