Back in January 2017, I had this crazy idea to photograph the back garden from the same point, on the same date, each month! Some might think I’m mad, I probably did myself back then, but it is interesting, even for me, to take a look at the 12 images as a picture diary of what happened in the garden last year! They were all taken on the 7th of the month!
January 2017
February 2017
March 2017
As you might imagine, not a lot really happens in January, February and March. The fleecing you see during these 3 months is not to protect plants from the cold but to keep them safe from the wind damage! Driftwood is just a quarter of a mile from the sea and the wind can be extremely severe. To make matters worse, it is salt laden too, so can do much damage to delicate ferns and palms.
April 2017
Now, by April you can see a real transformation. To start with, there is a bit of sun which really helps. I have begun to take all the garden ornaments and furniture out of storage from Summer House and shed! The screening, I take down each year and put back in different places, has started to emerge, helping create the different garden rooms. You can see a few tulips in bloom, providing some splashes of colour.
May 2017
By May there are a few more leaves on the trees, a camellia is in full bloom and the white flowers of the sea kale look good in the centre! It is all starting to look a bit lush! I store many objets d’art for the winter and they all appear again in May helping to transform the garden.
June 2017
Ordinarily, I would say that June and July are the best months for colour in the back garden but as the June photo shows, that was not the case in 2017. The annuals are all planted out but not many flowering, just a few petunias and the rose, Tess of the Durbervilles on the left. We open to the public on 1st June and have seen over 17000 visitors since 2009 and raised a staggering £95000 for charity.
July 2017
Certainly, by July there was much upward growth, and more colour with Alstroemeria Indian Summer, Hydrangea Schneeball, Buddleja magenta, lilies and Shasta daisies to name but a few. Extra tables and chairs are put out on the public open days (usually 14 each year) to allow us to serve my delicious home-made tea and cakes too. I’ve baked over 7000 portions since we started!
August 2017
Unusually in August you can see that it looks the best month of all. The Shasta daisies are swamping the green table and chairs and the corridor of planting right behind the house looks the best it has looked all Summer.
September 2017
By September, I expect it to start going over, as we close the garden gate to the public on 3rd of the month after a 3-weekend art festival held in the garden, when we generally sell over £12000 art. You can see one of the large pieces near the green table. It is still looking quite good though!
October 2017
Unusually there is still much colour in October. I’d started to remove some of the dead annuals, as you can see from the empty pots on the central path. This was probably the first year in the 10 years I’ve been opening that it has looked this good at this time of the year!
November 2017
By November it is time to protect the more delicate palms again from the oncoming winter winds. Plants have been cut back and moved to sheltered areas at the back of the house. Hedges have been trimmed on the perimeter and along the central path. Looking neat and tidy for the quiet Winter months.
December 2017
December does not look much different as I don’t tend to do much work outdoors as my other passion is Christmas. This year my indoor Christmas decorations ended up in the Daily Mail, on BBC SE Today and on line with the Daily Mirror, I have a collection going back to the 1930’s which constitutes 20 crates currently being packed away.
Geoff’s Impressive Christmas Trees!
In 2018 I plan to do the same with my front beach garden too! You can read more of Driftwood and see all it’s open dates for 2018 at www.driftwoodbysea.co.uk
Geoff Stonebanks was very lucky to be able to retire early from 30 years in Royal Mail back in 2004. He had 3 different careers with them first as a caterer, then manager of a financial analysis team and finally as an Employee Relations Manager and Personnel Manager. He sold up and moved with his partner to Bishopstone, near Seaford in East Sussex in 2004 and now spends all his time gardening and fundraising for Macmillan Cancer Support. Using his multi award-winning garden, featured on Gardeners’ World on BBC TV and finalist in Gardeners’ World Magazine Garden of the Year 2016, he’s raised £164,500 for various charities in 12 years, £109,000 of that for Macmillan. In his spare time, he is also Publicity Officer for the National Garden Scheme in East & Mid Sussex. In 2023, Geoff was also crowned one of the 500 Coronation Champions.
In “The Office” I managed to keep the Yellow Suffer Tomato going until the second week of December before it finally succumbed to blight. I didn’t manage to put the amaranths seedlings into individual pots as I found it too cold for me, and with the nerve damage in my fingers I kept dropping things with my woolly gloves on. I tried thin gloves but once the cold was in my fingers I couldn’t do anything anyway. So now I’m at the stage of just checking the pots every few days and just giving the plants a tiny drink of water if the compost is mostly dry. I can’t risk watering them after 3pm in case there is a frost, but as they are still growing I can’t let them get stressed or dehydrated either – it’s harder than keeping them alive in the summer!
My Snow Princess Calendulas are getting far too big for their 3 inch pots, I didn’t put them in the Ty Mawr borders as I wanted to keep these separate from the yellow/orange ones, mainly because I want to see how they perform outside and to collect some seeds heads once they are spent. There is a tiny turnip that seems to be semi dormant, and a few tiny lavenders just freshly hatched from their pods. The violas are flowering like mad making the greenhouse smell divine. The Larkspurs are about 4 inches and the remaining cornflowers are about 6 inches high. There is still no sign of the grasses, or Liatris, Foxgloves, Red Hot Pokers or olive trees, there is however lots of little Heleniums popping up in the seed trays. Sadly the hyacinths didn’t come back, but I can still feel the corms so I’ll leave them for a bit longer. In the border of course are the house plants as well as Aloe Vera’s and money tree.
Back in the summer I won blogger of the month with “The Sentimental Gardener” and used the prize money/gift voucher to bag myself an 
Leaving harvesting as late as possible will give the most cropping potential. When the moment arrives, usually when the top growth has been blackened off by the first air frost, cut back the remaining stems to about 10 cm and dig up the crown consisting of the bulky storage tubers (the crop), plus small propagation roots, or ‘buds’ growing just under the surface. The crowns for next year’s plants are stored much like dahlias for the winter in a cool but frost-free place where they won’t dry out.
The big tubers, carefully snapped from the crown, are crunchy, sweet and refreshing immediately — after washing and peeling can be eaten just like a carrot — but they do have the potential to become sweeter if left out in the sun for a few days. Only undamaged tubers can be stored for several months in paper or hessian sacks, much like potatoes, in a frost-free garage or shed. Any damaged tubers should be used immediately or made into syrup.
Crunchy yacon is a delicious and different addition to savoury salads — try substituting the apple in Waldrof salad with diced yacon, or combine grated carrots, yacon ‘sticks’ and sliced celery with a grain mustard vinaigrette — in fact it absorbs dressings and sauces of all kinds very readily, making it a tasty vehicle for other flavours. In the Peruvian tradition of ‘salpicon’ (fruit salad), versatile yacon can also make a delightful fruit dessert when chopped and added to your choice of pineapple, melon, papaya or mango, dressed with fresh orange juice. If used raw, the flesh of yacon will discolour, much like an apple, so after peeling and preparing, sprinkle immediately with a little dilute lemon juice, or dressing, to preserve its attractive white colour. Alternatively, for a hot dish, yacon can be roasted with other root vegetables tossed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and herbs, or even just simply steamed.
Once you have grown enough yacon to have some spare you can think about extracting the sweet liquid using a food processor — about 12 kgs makes a litre of the precious syrup. Simply wash and peel the tubers in batches then whizz them up thoroughly; place in a large pan and simmer down gently at about 103 C until a delicious dark brown syrup is formed. This sweet liquid is wonderful on porridge, or has a great affinity with cocoa when making ‘guilt-free’ chocolate treats!
In between planting my plugs, now garden readies, I have put some more Alliums using my trusty Wolf Garten 
