November means leaves

For some people, November means moustaches, but for us gardeners November means leaves.

There are more than fifty trees in the Genus garden at Field Cottage.  We have a spinney at each end where mainly sycamores have seeded themselves on mounds.  These small hills are made up of slag left over from the days when the farm was a stone quarry.

As well as the sycamore, there are beech, horsechestnut, lime, elm and ash.  We collect the leaves to make leaf mould using a three-year rotation.  The bin on the left in the picture is this year’s collection, on the right is last year’s and the bin in the middle is two years old.  The mould is thick and dark and very rich.  We’ll mix it with compost and put it on the flower and vegetable beds next spring.