A Return to Paul's Garden

Autumn is in full swing here and lots of expected changes in the garden are happening. Before we look into these seasonal changes in our garden let us look take you first a month back into Paul's garden first. A fabulous exotic garden that we have featured before and revisited last month as part of our Koi Club day of pond visits.

This bed greets you as you enter his garden from the side entrance, fabulous isn't it?

Then there's the koi pond of course...

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Brutally Beautiful

The Barbican Estate is a residential complex built during the 1960's and 1970's in Central London, in an area that was heavily damaged by bombings during World War 2. It is an example of a development with Brutalist Architecture and despite being a relatively new development in its entirety it is Grade II listed hence protected.

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Curious Looking Fruits

This year for the first time the Akebia quinata growing at the base of the large sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) at the bottom of our garden has born numerous curious looking fruits.

Also known as the Chocolate Vine, here it was in full bloom a few months ago during the spring...

I'm not sure what triggered it to produce so many fruits this year. We have three other Akebias in the garden but two are still small and have yet to produce blooms while a mature one didn't bloom this year (or perhaps it did, I couldn't remember!). It is however on this site for many years now so perhaps maturity is a big factor.

The fruits are the size of plums and ripe ones split open to reveal seeds.

Now is it edible? A quick search online suggested it is and I have given the inner pulp a little taste and it was sweet, reminding me of custard.

It is very pretty in it's own right and perhaps best left to be admired as an ornamental plant curiosity rather than for consumption.

After a few days the core of seeds fall off as a whole. Will we be weeding out hundreds of Akebia seedlings next year? We'll just have to wait and see!

Pretty isn't it?

Mark :-)

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Autumn Beckons

It's October now and autumn has definitely begun. Although the garden is still looking very lush and only a few plants have just started changing leaf colours and shedding them, preparations have begun for the coming colder months.

First things first, start treating and shifting our pots of succulents. It wasn't easy to break up the display we created for the summer but I took a deep breath and just went on with it.

I really ought to get a potting bench. This squatting malarkey isn't good for my back long term. Still one has to smile...

For the whole of last week it was sunny and dry, albeit with significantly cooler temperatures than the previous month. The week before though we had so much rain which helped most of the succulent to bulk up even more.

But there are lots of pots to shift so one must carry on.

As expected we didn't get to finish moving them all. We weren't expecting to anyway. Autumn preparation usually goes on for weeks but we've had a good head start already.

I'll miss the succulent display we had last summer...

But they don't look too bad under cover either.

They'll keep me company as I spend more time once again, during the colder months in the koi shed.

Mark :-)

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