Autumn Gardening by the Coast

There’s something especially beautiful about May near the coast. While much of the country begins to settle into winter, my little patch still feels wrapped in warmth. The days have been golden and calm, with the sun sitting lower in the sky and casting that soft autumn light across the garden. In the mornings and evenings, the bellbirds have been singing constantly — one of my favourite sounds of the season.

Autumn in the flower garden feels less like an ending and more like a quiet beginning.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been busy clearing out the last of the summer crops and preparing the garden for the cooler months ahead. One of the biggest jobs has been moving my seven chickens into the tunnel house. They’ve happily scratched through the old beds, cleaned up pests, turned over the soil, and helped clear everything out far quicker than I could have myself. They really are excellent little workers — especially when bribed with kitchen scraps.

Now the beds are slowly being refreshed. I’ve been adding generous layers of compost, rebuilding the soil after a busy growing season, and sowing green cover crops on the beds I won’t be planting straight away. It’s all part of caring for the garden through winter so it’s ready to burst back into life come spring.

This is also one of my favourite times for sowing hardy annual flowers. There’s something hopeful about planting seeds before winter arrives, trusting them to quietly grow strong roots beneath the cold soil. Many of the flowers I love most actually thrive from autumn sowing.

This season I’m planting sweet peas, cornflowers, larkspur, snapdragons, corncockle, Iceland poppies, Orlaya, along with anemones and ranunculus for spring blooms. These flowers bring such softness and romance to the garden — delicate petals dancing in the spring wind after months of patient growing.

Autumn gardening has a slower rhythm to it. Less frantic harvesting, more preparation and dreaming. It’s a season of clearing, nourishing, sowing, and noticing the beauty that still lingers in the changing light.

And honestly, with warm afternoons, birdsong in the trees, and tiny seedlings beginning to emerge, it’s hard not to fall in love with the garden all over again.