Changing Seasons in the Victorian Walled Garden

September is one of the nicest seasons here in the Victorian Walled Garden in Kylemore Abbey, I think. Even so, many plants are coming to its end of season or life, there is still lots to see behind our walls.

The display of late summer flowering plants like Sedums, Anemones or Pearl Everlasting gives a colourful show at the moment, just before autumn approaches us with full force.

The orange of the Calendulas creates a nice contrast to the pink shades of Snapdragons and the blues of Lobelias in combination with the lush green of the lawns.

A lot of dead heading is needed to keep the blossom going as long as possible.

Also, the Cannas have a great season this year and add to the subtropical and lush feeling of the Victorian bedding layouts in our garden. 

The heat spell we experienced in June let our Pumpkins ripe much better then in recent years and it is lovely to see how children are getting excited when seeing them.

Few of our apple trees are cropping heavy, especially the cider apples are doing well this year. Also, the pear trees are fruiting well.

The Herbaceous Border is slowly coming to its end of the flowering season.

Anemones, Asters, Kaffir Lilies and Sedums are the last flowers blooming and we started already to cut back older perennials who finished flowering much earlier.

Soon it will be time to replace all summer bedding with next years spring bedding plants and to prepare the vegetable plots for the winter season.

We started to harvest seeds of all kinds of flowers and vegetables for the coming season, a process which will last well into October. The seeds of our heritage climbing bean variety 'Borlotto Lingua di Fuoco' from Italy, dating back to 1880, are not ripe yet and need another couple of weeks before we can harvest them.