An Autumnal Stroll Around Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens

I was hoping to go to Marsh Lane NR again on Thursday afternoon but - you guessed it - the permits and keys still haven't arrived so I decided to go along to Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens instead.

There was still plenty of colour from flowers in the borders.

In the Melon Ground I collected some conkers

and there were loads of green tomatoes. Its a pity they hadn't got any for sale as my tomato plants have stopped producing and I don't have green tomatoes for Green Tomato Chutney this year:(

The Gardens held an Apple Weekend last Saturday and Sunday and in the Green House

I found displays of many varieties of apples and pears together with quince, medlar and flowers.

The Extra Gardens (the less formal part of the gardens outside the Walled Garden) were open and I entered via Nut Ground

Mirror Pool is no longer "fenced off" and it looks as though restoration is more or less complete.

There were plenty of windfall apples left for birds, butterflies and insects in New Orchard. This is a good area for Redwings later in the year.

I found sloes in the usual area although most were now looking rather shrivelled and past their "sell by" date!

Autumn colours are starting to appear

along with berries - Rose Hips, Spindle, Rowan and Holly.

I've been hoping for a rather beautiful moth called Merveille du Jour that appears at this time of year in my moth trap but yet again no sign this year. The larval food plant of the moth is oak so I spent rather a lot of time looking at the trunks of oak trees - again without having any luck!

The Summer House contained more displays from Apple Weekend - Pumpkins, marrows and potatoes.

Remains of a Gazebo in a corner of the Gardens.

I've spent a lot of time this year reading various works by Richard Jefferies and Edward Thomas - surely two of our greatest, if not our greatest, nature writers. So I thought I would share with you a poem by Edward Thomas called "Digging" - so evocative of this time of the year.


"Today I think
Only with scents, - scents, dead leaves yield,
And bracken, and wild carrot's seed,
And the square mustard field;

Odours that rise
When the spade wounds the root of tree,
Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed,
Rhubarb or celery;

The smoke's smell too,
Flowing from where a bonfire burns
The dead, the waste, the dangerous,
And all to sweetness turns.

It is enough
To smell, to crumble the dark earth,
While the robin sings over again
Sad songs of Autumn mirth.

"Digging" by Edward Thomas