hi welcome back to garden ninja now quite a few of you online have been
asking me to start to do garden tours of my own garden here at Garden Ninja HQ
Now we're in October and I thought it'd be a perfect time to give you a
walk around and show you what's happening here in the exploding atom
garden during the autumn months. I absolutely love autumn what you'll find
is a whole host of trees and plants in your garden take on a transformation as
either drop the leaves or get ready for winter it's gonna walk you around show
you some of my top picks today and some of the things I've been up to in October
to give you some inspiration for your own gardens so come on let's get
cracking!
What's really exciting this month is that the turf I fitted last month has
started to mesh together and this allows exploding atom garden to seamlessly
move in to the area in front of the house if you've watched the series on
YouTube about the exploding atom garden you'll know that in the past
there was a really old Hawthorn hedge there and a really rocky
path so what I did was I remove the hedge
once the birds had finished nesting and removed the path and then I've laid this
turf last one to the whole garden blends into one and it really pulls you
from out of the house and into the exploding atom garden and that's the
key design tip you're gonna be designing Gardens make sure that you're making the
most of the views and the vistas both to the house to any outbuildings
or any particular focal points that you want to use and in this case I want the
focal point from the house backwards to be all the way where we going into the
center of the exploding atom garden so that's the whole point you leave the
front door and you pulled out throughout the garde!n
Now another reason I love autumn is the changing of the trees leaves now this
example behind me is a beautiful multi-step medlar tree which is a really
ancient fruit tree and you don't see them very often so I found it this year
I thought I've got to have one I need to treat myself I need a Medlar tree so
I've put this at the very base of the exploding atom Garden near so we do
the trees so it kind of blends in if you look closely you'll see these fruits now
they're probably one of the latest fruiting fruit trees available in that
it takes until about December before these Medlars can be picked and then
they've got to be bletted which means that you bring them inside and you leave
them to partially break down before you eat them
Now that all sounds very gross and a bit grotesque I'm assured that the taste is
very delectable and quite unusual so I'm gonna give those a go this year and
worst case I can always make a chutney or a medlar cheese out of the fruits
So October is also prime all planting time here in the UK and I've been
planting bulbs in my lawn and that's usually known it's naturalized planting
where you're planting bulbs in a lawn or a flowerbed to make it look as if
they've been there forever now we've got this row of trees here that joins in
with the exploding atom garden but they look a bit regimented so what I've done
and you can't see it because I've been quite discreet he's down here with a
spade I've dug in sort of slant throughout the turf and soil and planted
some bulbs particular I've used Narcissi which is the daffodil family and
I've also put in some snowdrops what that will do is it will extend the
season so in January the snowdrops will come up providing those little white
pops of color and then moving forward to March and April when all the daffs will
be off in a riot of yellow and the whole idea is that by extending the season of
interest in those glib winter months you've still got a bit of color and
excitement out in the garden which hopefully bring people out to go and
have a look
now if you've only got a small garden and naturalizing bulbs in your lawn is a
really good way of maximizing space and I've done it in plenty of small garden
designs and it's really easy she gets paid and you jab it into the grass at an
angle you can dig down to around ten centimeters and then pop your bulbs in
pull back the turf and then next spring they'll pop up bringing you loads of
cover so even if you've got a tiny garden if you've got some turf you can
match those bulbs it's so easy!
So have a look at this behind me this is the Euonymus alatus also known as
the burning bush for most of the year it's pretty subdued and it has a green
leaf however when we come into autumn the leaves turn this fiery crimson color
and we're just shouting out for attention so when we're inside we look
out and we see both of these that flank the path and they're like massive
flaming full stop stones come on come and have a look!
Now I'm going to let you into a little secret from a distance this garden looks
really nice at this time of year and this pops of color because I've planned
succession planting will you take plants that are going to fire at different
times out the air but if we get closer and this is the secret you will notice
that it's actually pretty much covered in weeds and all looking that's sorry
for itself now don't panic this time of year is time of year what I prefer to
just let things be for a while you look probably spent most of spring
and summer like I have either deadheading planting digging doing
things in the garden and I always think by the time you get to autumn just sit
back have a bit of relax take a chill pill because whilst it's nice to keep
everything pristine sometimes it's better to sit back but let nature do its
thing!
The area of the garden that I'm amazingly impressed with this year is the red hot
central core of the exploding atom garden and that's this bed here you can
see behind me now I'm really impressed for two reasons
the first is that I've grown 95% of these plants from seeds myself the
second reason is I've done it all without plastic as part of my gardening
without plastic challenge this year which shows you that if you want to be
environmentally friendly and sound you can do it all been growing from seed I
have not had to use expensive tools or weird and wonderful compost through all
in a greenhouse and you could do that too
they're in the central core I'm also using succession planting so in each the
different beds we've got flowers that come up from early spring and even some
specimens it will take you all the way through to December had a majority of
these flowers in the central bed are late summer flowers things like Heleniums
Ecineacea, Rudbkeckia I've got loads of grasses as well so they will have texture to the
border what that means is is the other borders around the outskirts here
tending to die back in the autumn because they're early spring and summer
flowers these were blood stop and give you that summer color by extending the
interest not only deep what to go out to your garden more frequently but you're
giving more wildlife and the environment a much better chance of survival through
the winter by providing all these pollen rich plants seeds and things for birds
and insects to eat so really is when when you get a garden 365 days of the
year and so does Mother Nature!
if you want another tip don't be too quick to clean up sort of your herbaceous perennials
and plants as that died but if you look at this behind me this isn't
Achillea we've then got and Echinacea those that were pretty much dead now
from the stem up because they've had their turn but if you look you've got
these beautiful seed heads and I will leave them throughout winter because I
quite like the structure of them you can take them back to the ground now but if
you do then you can have a void where they once were so I tend to leave these
until late winter so that brings us to the end the first garden tour and it's
going to be plenty of stop happening over winter and things that need to
happen around the garden so I'll be reporting back from someone give you an
update on this the exploding autumn garden if you've got questions garden
traumas or problems that you want help with why not ask me the garden ninja let's
help you you can add a comment below you can find me on social media and every
question gets to reply if you've liked this video why not subscribe to my
youtube channel where there are loads more garden design hints tips and hacks
to help you make your garden awesome I'm off inside to go to for a brew
I've been Garden Ninja - happy gardening!