October in our garden

Spending time in the garden during October involves getting the garden tidy before winter and preparing the garden for spring. I spent most of this weekend tidying up the garden, sweeping up leaves, planting bulbs, restocking the bird feeder, adding new plants to my window boxes and rearranging a few things before the winter kicks in.

I emptied my window boxes, keeping the geraniums and planting them into small pots to keep over winter in my cold frame greenhouse. In their place I planted red cyclamen and ivy into my window boxes, creating the same arrangement for each front windowsill. These new plants will hopefully last into the new year and add a bit of colour during the grey and dreary months ahead.

I love the combination of delicate cyclamen flowers and the trailing ivy. They are so pretty!

I planted a pack of violas in the window box on our windowsill in the back garden, the flowers look like little faces! These should last during the winter as long as I dead head the flowers and keep them watered.

It is that time of year when you need to plant bulbs for spring. I planted two different types of pink tulip bulbs, one with a white edge and one deep pink. I love daffodils and bought two types of daffodil bulbs, Tete a Tete and Pheasants Eye, both new to me before my trip to the garden centre but I loved the pictures shown on the bulb packets so went with these. I interspersed blue and white Grape Hyacinth bulbs in amongst the other bulbs to mix up the arrangements a little. I haven't planted bulbs in Autumn before so I think it will be a bit of a trial...I hope to have a spring garden full of pots full of colourful flowers! 

Here's our little courtyard space this October...

I spent time sweeping up and moving a few of the pots around, re-potting a few plants and separating the lilies into different pots. I'm hoping I have done it correctly and that they will survive being split up!  

And look who spent most of the afternoon with me...

A very friendly robin enjoying all the worms and slugs that I found when I moved the pots around!

I had a great weekend enjoying the fresh air and making the most of being in the garden. Have you started planting any spring bulbs yet? What have you chosen to plant?