If I’m honest – and I always try to be – November is my least favourite month of the year. It’s dark, often wet, and somehow the days feel even shorter than December’s, though they’re not. But they’re certainly seem darker.

That said, I mustn’t grumble. All those soggy leaves make wonderful leaf mould. The quickest way to start the process is simply to run the lawnmower over them, before creating your heaps. It speeds everything up dramatically – even tough beech leaves can be turned into beautiful crumbly leaf mould within 12 months.

And yet, just as one horticultural season ends, another has already begun. Our garlic is already poking its shoots through the soil.

This year’s harvest was the best yet – partly thanks to the weather, but mostly because we’re getting better at growing them. This autumn we’ve just stuck to our firm favourites: ‘Germidour’ and ‘Thermidrome’. And we are using our own seed cloves.

It will soon be time to plant the tulips, too.

Everyone rightly admires the fiery colours of the trees, shrubs and grasses at this time of year, but our little friends the fungi can produce equally astonishing shapes and colours for those who stop to look. Recently Nicole discovered several clusters of stunning fungi in the Coronation Beds. Depending on the angle, their caps shifted from duck-egg blue when viewed from above to a soft, silvery grey when you knelt beside them. They’ve never been recorded in the gardens before. We think the spores must have arrived on the straw we used to mulch the neighbouring cannas.

A quick word about our Asian pear trees (Pyrus pyrifolia) dotted around the gardens. They are striking at the moment, hung with large fruit clothed in golden-russet skins – they look for all the world like Christmas trees draped with golden baubles. Asian pears are said to be very sweet when eaten fresh from the tree, but in all honesty none of the garden team has ever managed to taste a ripe one! The only soft fruit we find have been shot through with beak-shaped holes where the birds got there first. But at least someone enjoys them.

(As an aside, I found Latin utterly pesky at college – and, funnily enough, was never invited to join the cosy Latin club at school – but it does serve a purpose. The English names for Pyrus pyrifolia include Nashi pear, Chinese pear, Japanese pear … but Latin name brings us all back to the same common denominator: our friend Pyrus pyrifolia.)

Finally, may I take this opportunity to thank every visitor who came to the gardens this season. It has been a genuine pleasure to meet so many of you, to chat, and to swap ideas and stories. Enjoy the blessings of the season.

The Garden Team . . .