We are crowdfunding to replace our fence. The current wooden fence was painted with a bright mural in 2016, now looking rather battered and less bright. A section of the fence on Sprowston and on Earlham, along with the front gate, got blown down by storm Eunice 10 days ago. Temporary repairs have been done, but there’s a worry that …

The storms keep coming, first Dudley, then Eunice, and as I write along comes Franklin. The not so cuddly threesome, bringing rain and high winds. Storm Eunice hit the garden in some quite surprising ways. A clear plastic pane from the greenhouse roof was blown away to some place unknown. We can’t find it. Not in the garden, not in …

It’s been dry for the last four weeks but today it rained. At last. A long dry spell in winter hinders growth, as plants are coming out of winter dormancy and need water in order to make new shoots. But the trouble with rain is you either get too much or too little. And with climate change, we don’t know …

January is the longest month. Beginning at the tail end of Christmas and finishing in sight of spring; it is a shivery time to get through. The days, though, are slowly getting longer and the garden, like a drowsy sleeper, rubs its eyes in the growing light. Buds in trees and bushes form in the autumn in the axils of …

It was -2ºC in the early hours and the pond is still frozen when I come into the garden at 10 am. The ice isn’t smooth but has ribs in places, rather like a church ceiling. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that ice has more volume than the same weight of water, and in trying …

It is biting cold, the wind blowing the last leaves off the sycamore. The cherry is already stripped, though the birch, its leaves gone yellow, has still plenty of little flags. The pond is withered, the iris leaves languid and browning. The papyrus is unhappy this weather, this exiled plant dreaming of the Nile, crocodiles pushing through its three metre …

We have got our 2m strip back from Gateway. This was ‘loaned’ to the site as they needed it for access for their building work. For us it meant flipping over our roofed pergola, and moving any plants in pots. Plants growing along the boundary in the ground such as ash and Russian vine were lost. Our re-acquired ground is …

It has been a typical November week, with rain and temperatures slightly above average, and lots of leaf fall. Most fall this month, some in October, a few in the first week of December, but November is the month when the mass comes down. Most of the fallen leaves, so far, are from the big sycamore which still has quite …

It’s chilly in the garden with a biting wind. This is November without doubt. On Saturday we had our Welcoming Winter festival. There was home-made soup and bread to keep the cold away. We had bulb planting, mostly by children (‘pointed end up’) but a few adults too. Some were planted around the garden but most were planted in pots. …

COP26 starts on October 30 and is due to finish on 12 November, but is likely to extend through that weekend with all the arguments and attempts at getting coherent policy from the differing interests. In 2009, I went to Copenhagen with the Campaign Against Climate Change. This was COP15, and we were there for the big march. We weren’t …