My garden isn’t big enough to grow edibles on a large scale, although I do get a decent crop of apples most years. Unfortunately this year I was away at the crucial time and many apples fell before they could be picked but the birds enjoyed them and no doubt mousy and ratty had their fair share too. 
It is a solitary pleasure I enjoy every year to wander round the garden munching a freshly picked apple or a few blackberries, a crisp runner bean straight from the vine or, for me at least, the pure pleasure of a drippingly ripe fig that is so ready to be picked it drops from the tree into your hand. You have to be a bit circumspect regarding figs though, and keep a very weather eye on the number you consume! Failure to observe this simple rule can have significant consequences.Big ideas in small gardens.
Having grown the Katsura tree (cercidiphyllum japonicum) in a pot for a couple of years I made room for it in the border this spring and it has seized the initiative and grown a foot or so, even with a canary creeper strangling its outer reaches. It possesses an ethereal manner and a pleasing habit and in the autumn the real payoff comes with fabulous leaf colour and the strange but unmistakable scent of burnt sugar as the leaves fall. That said – I am bound to mention the discrepancy between the plant label when I purchased it from Westonbirt where I’d seen it growing, and my later research i.e. the gospel according to the RHS Encyclopaedia of Garden Plants. The label pronounced it a “medium shrub” – RHS tells me a minimum of 20 feet (in old money), and it if grows as rapidly in future years as it has this year, bearing in mind the shock of being moved out of the large pot and the settling in process, I doubt if it will take very long to reach its potential. As I have watched progress this year my inner voice has nagged on the odd occasion “you saw it growing at Westonbirt National Arboretum, a large area in anyone’s book, that should have nudged an alarm bell somewhere in the back of your mind” – true, but have you ever visited an enormous furniture warehouse and chosen a comfortable new sofa for the sitting room – it doesn’t look that big in the enormous warehouse – but then you get it home…..The scent of late summer.
This scented begonia (Aromantics) having started quite late is still flowering, so a satisfactory reward for patience. I’ve been expecting it to flop in the recent cold weather but it has survived beneath a scrap of horticultural fleece at night so I’ll leave it outside for as long as I dare. The scent is difficult to reach given the weight of the flowers and their drooping habit but is worth the effort.Brilliant.
Such a favourite in autumn, no matter how dull the day, cotoneaster horizontalis will always brighten a corner, at least until the local blackbirds decide to do lunch!
