Putting the growing season to bed | Allan Jenkins

As the days dim, it’s time to tidy, dig and maybe sow for spring

Let’s face it, October is not much of a growing month. It’s the time of damage limitation; preparation for winter; tidying – shutting down your veg garden if that is your wont.

First, what we are up against. We lose two hours of light this month. No more the long, high-sun, late-summer evenings, picking, sowing and mooching after work. My almanac says the sun will set before 4.30pm in southern England, but before 5.15pm in the west of Ireland. It is the month the clocks fall back. October has full moons topping and tailing the month: the harvest moon we had on the 1st, the hunter’s (also known as blood) moon is still to come on the 31st.

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Exploring Somerset’s garden of earthly delights

An aerial walkway is among the wonders at the spectacular Hadspen estate open to the public

If you walk left on entering the Newt in Somerset, past the shop selling artisanal wares, up the slope and into the deer park, you will arrive at an avenue of pines edging an old Roman road. It’s a good place to view the monumental scale of the work that has taken place on the 800-acre Hadspen estate since the South African, Koos Bekker, and his wife Karen Roos bought it in 2013.

Look west, towards the 17th-century, Grade II*-listed Hadspen House and you can take in the owners’ masterplan, designed by the French architect Patrice Taravella. There are the pretty squares of the kitchen garden; the egg-shaped “parabola”, a walled labyrinth featuring 267 varieties of apple tree; a cascade of ponds; a Victorian glasshouse; a cottage orné; and a succession of pools and lawns leading up to the house itself, once the seat of the Hobhouse family, now a hotel.

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Back from the brink: saving a London home

It was almost falling down – but this east London terrace is now a treasure-filled sanctuary

It’s the house that shouldn’t be here!” jokes creative dynamo David Hodgson, about the Victorian mid-terrace in east London he discovered six years ago, when it was split into two flats and was charmingly dilapidated.

“Our surveyor said the house was never built to survive,” he explains. “The street was bombed during the war, and the house was so old it had subsidence and leaned to the left. The roof had a hole in it because it was never finished properly.”

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It's 'on a road to nowhere', but Norfolk is a magnet for city-dwellers

Estate agents and even boat-builders have seen a surge in interest from buyers keen to relocate to the country

Neil Shorten, 42, a business owner from Cambridgeshire, has just realised a long-held dream of moving to Norfolk, and now lives in the coastal resort of Sheringham.

“We were thinking about doing it in five to 10 years’ time,” said Shorten. “Then when Covid kicked in and working from home was productive, the question was, why wait, why not get on with life? There is always a reason to put it off a year.”

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Back from the brink: saving a London home

It was almost falling down – but this east London terrace is now a treasure-filled sanctuary

It’s the house that shouldn’t be here!” jokes creative dynamo David Hodgson, about the Victorian mid-terrace in east London he discovered six years ago, when it was split into two flats and was charmingly dilapidated.

“Our surveyor said the house was never built to survive,” he explains. “The street was bombed during the war, and the house was so old it had subsidence and leaned to the left. The roof had a hole in it because it was never finished properly.”

Continue reading...

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