I can’t believe we’re about to enter the final month of 2024! What a year!

December not only marks the start of true winter, it’s also of course when the festive season really kicks into gear. It’s a time to reflect on the previously 11 months but also start to look ahead to what might come to pass in 2025. My team have had a very busy year in the garden, what with our ongoing restoration work, the addition of thousands of new plants, trees, shrubs and bulbs, the various awards and accolades we’ve received and everything else that goes with looking after and restoring an historic Grade I listed 240 acre woodland garden site! But before we look ahead to what exciting projects we might be getting stuck into over the next 12 months, there is much to enjoy in the garden now and also plenty to keep us busy this December.

The temperatures have yet to drop to the usual levels yet at the time of writing. It’s been quite a wet autumn again this year and a pretty mild, damp year in general, so we’re hoping that we get a proper frosty winter with much less rain. The unseasonally warm and soggy conditions have meant that we’ve not been able to cut back and ‘put to bed’ some of our beds and borders ready for mulching yet. We’re also still mowing lawns just as regularly as we were in October and although the conditions have allowed the welcome extension of any late flowering plants such as the various Salvia cultivars and Amicia zygomeris for example, the garden will need some proper cold weather at some point to put everything into dormancy and to knock back any pests and diseases that might otherwise linger. The plus side of the delayed wintery conditions has meant that we’ve been able to extend our planting season right through to the end of November so every cloud has a silver lining.

All being well, Jack Frost should be nipping at our noses, fingers and toes this month and the frosty winter wonderland that this creates is truly a sight to behold here in at Leonardslee. Ice-crusted seed heads on the herbaceous plants we’ve left standing in our more formal areas for example, and frozen berries, such as the aptly named Christmas Berry shrubs (Photinia davidiana) down at the lakes as well as the Skimmia japonica shrubs on the way to Bluebell Bank, are a true joy of December. And while we’re talking of berries, don’t forget the famously festive holly trees across the whole estate including some interesting variegated specimens behind the Rock Garden. As well as holly, why not see if you can spot any ivy and mistletoe around the garden when you’re next here too!

As well as the aforementioned Christmas Berry, we also have other plants with yuletide connections on display right now, such the Christmas Rose (or Hellebore) which you’ll spot dotted through the areas near the house, and Christmas Box (also known as Sarcococca). This is one of my favourite plants at this time of year. Covered in sweetly scented flowers, you’ll find a number of varieties in and around the Rock Garden, in the house borders and also further afield as you explore the Loderi Garden for instance. It also makes a great cut stem to bring into the house if you have any at home. I’ve often wondered whether it would make a good hedging plant, what with it being evergreen and with the added bonus of the scented blooms.

While you’re exploring the garden,

Make sure you get down to the lakes in the bottom of the valley this December as they reflect the skeletal deciduous trees and evergreen conifers that surround them.

Did you know:

That if you wanted to keep warm this month and walked round the perimeter of all of the lakes here at Leonardslee, it would take over 3700 steps and would burn nearly 250 calories?! That’s the equivalent of a large slice of Christmas cake or a couple of small mince pies! I think I might have to do a couple of laps myself!

Talking of keeping moving when it’s cold at this time of year, if you haven’t ventured up to the Pinetum in the Deer Park before, now is a perfect opportunity. A Pinetum is a collection of any type of conifer, be it pine, fir or cedar for example. Conifers look great throughout the whole year, particularly when covered in cones, but in December they really stand out and offer an added interest that other trees that have lost their leaves do not. The original Pinetum at Leonardslee was planted by Sir Edmund Loder in the early 1900’s up near the Top Garden to the north of the estate, but most of this was unfortunately lost in the 1987 great storm. Sir Edmund’s Great Grandson Robin Loder then re-planted the current version exactly 100 years later at the opposite end of the Leonardslee valley. Some of my favourite trees in the Leonardslee Pinetum include Cryptomeria japonica ‘Sekkan Sugi’ with its bronze winter foliage, Thujopsis dolobrata ‘Variegata’ with it multi-coloured flattened needles and the Black Spruce (Pinus mariana) which has stunning small purple cones. There are plenty of conifers that you could call ‘Christmas Trees’ in the Pinetum too, which all adds to the festive spirit here in the garden.

The garden team will no doubt be wrapping up warm this winter while we’re working in the garden, but we’ll also make sure some of our more tender plants are well protected at this time of the year too.  This might involve a good mulch with well-rotted organic matter over the top of underground Dahlia tubers in the Herbaceous Beds or around Canna crowns in the House borders for instance.  The mulch will insulate the roots in the soil and stop them becoming waterlogged after heavy rainfall or snow-melt.  Another method of winter protection is to wrap a plant in horticultural fleece.  We’ll do this on the likes of our tree ferns (Dicksonia antarctica) in The Dell to stop them from suffering too much frost damage. Once wrapped, the crown can then be packed with straw or even dead bracken fronds as a real ‘belt and braces’ measure to prevent the ill effects of wet, icy weather.

There are some plants that we have to bring indoors entirely. Our Abyssinian Banana plants (Ensete ventricosum ‘Maurelii’) from around the house for instance, will need this sort of protection. A couple of years ago we tried dry-storing them by removing all soil from the roots, cutting off all the fleshy foliage and then keeping them in a cardboard box in a dark corner, after first storing them upside down to drain as much water from the stems as possible. Unfortunately, that wasn’t very successful, possibly down to the extreme extended below freezing temperatures we had in winter 2022. Last year we cut back most of the leaves but potted them up in barely moist compost before storing them in a dry corner of the glasshouse. This allowed us to see when the growing point emerges again in Spring, ready for re-planting and was much more successful so we’ll be using this method again this year too. Fingers crossed!

Other jobs for my team this month will include starting the huge annual leaf clearing job; continued planting of trees, shrubs and bulbs as long as the soil is workable; continued clearance and restoration of key areas such as the Hillside Garden; getting some of our home-made mulch down on the beds and borders of the formal areas as well as getting the seed and plant catalogues out and planning for next year’s displays. Our garden volunteers also run general garden tours at 10.30am on the first Monday (so the 2nd in December) and third Wednesday (the 18th this time) of every month so make sure you book onto one of those if you’re interested to learn more about the history of the garden.

As you can see, there is plenty for you to see and plenty for us to be doing in the garden during December. I hope you all enjoy the Leonardslee Lights event this year and have a fantastic Christmas. Stay healthy and we look forward to seeing you here again in 2025 for another exciting year in the garden…!

Jamie Harris

Head Gardener