On the first of February we reached the halfway mark between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. In Pagan ritual the day is named Imbolc and, appropriately, I have a snowdrop of that name to mark the day here. This midway point is certainly something you can feel. In the shift in the light as darkness finally loosens its grip on the afternoons and in the new life stirring. In the woods the nosing wild garlic and in the garden, where first flowers are gathering in number in these mild, damp days.

At this midpoint, we mark the moment by gathering what has graced the garden so far for the mantlepiece, windowsills and bedside tables. We are at peak snowdrop at the moment, a week earlier than last year, but curiously there is less for the posies than a year ago when the freezes were harder. Last year’s cool summer and the endless wet we experienced until just recently must have had their influence, but regardless, we have surely turned a corner.  

The winter always seems shorter for the winter work. The tasks that mostly lie beyond the garden and are out of sight and out of mind in the growing season. Our orbit shifts with the land laid bare and we venture down to the stream again where the silvery water shimmers in light falling through branches and the nettles have retreated to ground and allow us once again to get to the water. The down season tasks in the areas where we deliberately exercise a lighter touch are rougher and readier than the detailed work in the garden, but there is always a long-term outcome in the heavier work and the land always gives back if it is tended with care.

When the poplars were at their most laden and weighty, two of the vetarans came crashing down to spread their length across the stream. One we heard, with an explosive crack, on a perfectly still day in August. The slimmer of the two, it fell nimbly amongst its companions to strike a fence post like a hammer, gathering up the tension in the wire so that we couldn’t open the gate to the crossing. The second tree, not so very far away and the bigger of the two came down silently, its enormous limbs pressing themselves into the soft earth, taking out a hornbeam and whiplashing my grove of young alders. It was almost impossible to make our way to the bridge over the stream for the carnage of broken limbs and weight of vegetation, so we left it until November when the garden demanded less, and time felt apparently in our hands.

Although I have long given up making new year’s resolutions – spring and autumn feel like more appropriate times to focus on setting goals and ambitions – January is always the moment to start forward planning the new season’s vegetable garden.

So, with the raised beds rock solid after consecutive hard frosts this week, out come the old wooden boxes inherited from my great Aunty Megan (former Land Girl and expert vegetable grower well into her 90’s) containing all of my seeds, and the process of sorting, discarding and note taking begins.

To the south of our property, where our land jumps the lane and then runs above it to the east, there are two fields marked on the deed maps as Upper Tyning and Lower Tyning, and which we call collectively the Tynings. They are both roughly triangular with their longest sides touching along a precipitous bank, called a lynchet. Lynchets are medieval earthworks (some are believed to be neolithic) which were made by ploughing the hillside to form banks to ease the steep slopes. In the mind’s eye the bank is a little like a diagonal fold made from corner to corner on a handkerchief. A crease in a continuous surface that divides the one thing distinctively into two with an above and below and a steep slope between.

The lynchet is fifteen metres or so at its deepest point and tapers to both ends where the fields meet again as the contours connect and allow free movement of stock and tractors. There are four mature sycamores on the banks and a hedge at the top comprised primarlily of elder, blackthorn, hawthorn, elm and dog rose. Being too steep to manage, the slope has a vegetation all its own with cowslips, hypericum, oregano, knapweed and scabious that escape the heaviest of the grazing. In the time we have been here we have allowed the bank to rewild. It was regularly sprayed by the previous owner to keep bramble and dog rose in check and was barren when we arrived, consisting of little more than rough grass and seedling sycamores. The blackthorn, or ‘Mother-of-all-woods’, has created protective thorny thickets where briar roses, spindle and seedling trees are now pushing through.

thank you for all of your support this year

with our wishes for a peaceful new year

The grass in the fields is deep and plentiful after a mild autumn and the farmer who owns the sheep that graze our land looks on it with a little gleam in his eye. The grass only stops growing for a short window in the winter, but as soon as the weather cools we see the sheep making their impact. Eating faster than the grass can grow, the lap of lushness slowly diminishes, and the winter green of dormancy is with us.

The berries that have hung on to now bare branches are also subject to the falling temperatures. A frosty morning brings flurries of birds that strip a species successionally; dunnock, blackbird, goldfinch, song thrush, mistle thrush and fieldfare. The bead-like berries of Malus transitoria last just a fortnight before they are suddenly gone. One day a tree that has been shining with fruit will be stripped back in a frenzy and for no apparent reason one hawthorn will be targeted, but not another. Perhaps it is a ripening that needs to hit an optimum moment of nutrition or depth of colour or sweet perfume. We shadow the progress, noting a tree that is suddenly bare and that there is a rhythm and a staggering in the ripening to make sure the plenty is drawn out a while yet.

The next few weeks of darkness will be the toughest. Our circadian rhythm responding to the long nights. An alarm that rings whilst it is still dark and evenings that start sometime in the middle of the afternoon. The short days distil a refreshed awareness and I find myself pining for light when it is grey and uplifted when the skies are blue and the sun, tilted low, swings its lazy arc.

With dark prevailing the garden sinks into its deepest slumber and, for the first window in months it feels like there is time to take stock and in doing so, a responsibility to make the most of the daylight. This is when I write my winter job list, measuring out the few true weeks of dormancy against the jobs that can happen now and not when the growing season demands your attention. A carefully timed roster of tasks, one giving way to the next, responding to the weather and the gentle shifts in growth that happen despite it being winter.

The season of rich food is upon us once again and, much as I love comforting winter dishes sometimes a contrast is called for. Required even. It is for this reason that I have come to grow a wider and wider range of chicories and radicchios in the winter vegetable garden. Both raw and cooked the bitterness of chicory offsets the heaviness of winter food, stimulating the tastebuds and refreshing the appetite.

‘Belgian Witloof’, the roots of which I lifted a couple of weeks ago, have been replanted in covered pots in the toolshed to force them. I’m hoping they’ll produce pale chicons in time for Christmas Day. ‘Variegata di Castelfranco’, the pale green, red-speckled chicory, makes the prettiest winter salad. Sharply pointed radicchio ‘Rossa di Treviso’ and ball-shaped ‘Palla Rossa’ with their blood-red leaves set off by pristine white ribs both lend themselves particularly well to grilling or roasting.

The first serious frosts are forecast this weekend, so we have been busy these last few days. Bringing in the last of the tender perennials and putting trays of young plants grown from seed into the polytunnel to protect from winter wet. The frames are full to bursting with spring bulbs and all the things that need cossetting. Just this morning the gunnera were cut down and covered before the freeze withers their foliage. This last job of the season is a pleasure, crafting their winter hats, upturning their huge leaves, one overlapping the next, to protect the primordial crowns from whatever winter brings.

With the turn in the weather, the last of the autumn colour is being driven from the woods and hedgerows and, in the garden, we see the very last flowers. The final asters, speckled now and dimmed, a few brave kniphofias challenging the season and nerines holding still in their month-long reign of colour. But really this is it. The turning point from one season to the next.

With much excitement my order of Mediterranean plants arrived from southern France last week. It is no longer easy to import plants from Europe and the hoops through which we now have to jump are numerous. We once took such choice for granted and, as with so many other issues, we now find ourselves unprepared for such a radical change. British nurseries were not prepared for this severance from Europe and need time to gear up to start producing here. So we have to plan further ahead, go without or propagate ourselves if we are to negotiate the choices we might need to make for a changing climate.

The idea behind my sand garden has been to familiarise myself with a palette of plants that can cope with the extremes we seem to be experiencing in terms of winter wet and drier periods in the growing season. The ‘final’ round of planting for the sand garden this year are plants from the great Olivier Filippi and his Jardin Sec and nursery. His list of available stock was published in late summer and I secured my plants immediately to avoid the “feeding frenzy” that Peter Clay warned me about. Peter, the buyer for Crocus and holder of the requisite import licence, was my go-between for this order. First for certification in Europe, followed by quarantine in his nursery and finally on to here. All in all, my new plants feel precious.