Where has the year gone?

Is it really the middle of autumn already? Judging by the first frost last night I guess it must be. Maybe it’s my age. But this year has just shot past and I’m already getting ready for the winter onslaught.

I’ve spent the last few days starting to put the garden to bed for the winter. I’ve started digging up all the half-hardy bedding plants, potting them up individually and putting them in the greenhouse. What was full of tomatoes, peppers and aubergines is now rammed to the gunnels with bedding, tender bulbs, succulents that can’t take winter wet and just about everything else that needs protection. I’ve still got the dahlias, cannas, hedychiums and colocassias to find some room for.

On Gardening Plus on BBC Essex on Saturday, we were inundated with calls, e-mails and texts from people who are all still keen on getting the best from their gardens and desperate for some timely advice. Whether it’s because they want to talk to a human being or whether they’re yet to discover the wonders of the internet I’m not sure, but there still seems to be a place for the ‘old fashioned’ means of information gathering.

Gardening clubs also look like they’re holding their own in the massive tide of new technology. Although, sadly, it seems that it’s the older gardeners who still attend their local club regularly – there aren’t that many where I turn up to give talks that have a good representation by younger (that is under-50!) gardeners. Again, I think it’s having human interaction and having a real place to gather socially that keeps them going; even social networking sites, forums and blogs and other recent web developments can’t offer that – not yet anyway!

So, although I’m firmly in favour of the joys of virtual gardening, let’s hear it for the old technology and the great British tradition of gardening clubs, magazines and local radio stations.