Two visits to the Gardens a week apart witnessed the arrival of winter this year. Last week it was still autumn, albeit a relatively subdued one in terms of colour, blanketed under dank anticyclonic gloom…
It was also dead calm, as indeed it had been for several weeks, leaving leaves largely where they were, apart from the groundscapes created by traditionally early droppers…
And it was mild, meaning there was still plenty of flowering to feed the bees and flies still busy in the garden.
Most exciting of all though were the bird’s-nests. Fungi, that is, their fruit bodies occupying just one of the peony pots. They are Crucibulum laeve – so-called Common Bird’s-nest, but we’ve never seen it before.
So we now have two species in the garden, Field Bird’s-nest from 2022 outside in the Reservoir Garden is the other, twice as large and greyer. Both are simply exquisite, and part of the reason we love nature so much!
And so to yesterday, winter: a sudden cold snap had brought several nights of penetrating frost, and even an unexpectedly early dusting of snow:
This was a very different day, with temperatures hovering around freezing and feeling much cooler in the stiff breeze, but with crystalline sunlight beaming down from an azure sky.
Whether the leaf colours had really changed that much, or their intensity was magnified by the quality of the light, it felt that winter was here…
Whether en masse or in detail, winter is permeating every corner of the garden…
And the blanket of fallen leaves grows ever more varied:
As for wildlife, as always in the cold, the garden was a refuge for birds: a Red-legged Partridge sitting disconsolately in a snowpatch, untroubled by visitors (there were none!) and safe from the guns, while a Moorhen had recently ventured out of the ponds and left its mark.
The berry bushes were full of Woodpigeons and five species of thrush (Song and Mistle Thrushes, Redwing, Fieldfare and Blackbird) gorging on the ripe fruits, leaving the still-green Ivy berries for late-winter sustenance.
Autumn is still not forgotten: under a Silver Birch there was a fruiting Fly Agaric (as with the Red-legged Partridge, only the second time in the Gardens for me) and a Birch Bracket in the trunk above.
The frosts had disposed of much of the previous week’s blooming, but remarkably there were still insects foraging, despite the cold. As I extolled the virtues of Mahonia, right on cue along came a Buff-tailed Bumblebee – the wonders of a fur coat! One of the best things any gardener can do is to plant midwinter-flowering shrubs to fill the nectar-gap when our native countryside simply is not up to the mark, the gap that used to be a hiatus in insect activity but now in an overheated world simply not the case.
Another surprise was a new insect for the garden, at least for me: nestling down in the solar reflector leaf of a Cistus populifolius was a Parent Bug, long-anticipated as likely to be present. Another one to add to the inventory we are starting this winter!
So winter may be here, but there is still plenty of the wild side of life to appreciate in the Beth Chatto Gardens. Open Thursday to Saturday, 10.00 to 16.00, until 21 December – AND until then it is entry is half-price – Welcome to Beth Chatto’s Plants and Gardens