Enjoying the garden as summer comes to an end

It's time to accept that the long summer is coming to an end. We've been so lucky this year with the weather, and we've really made the most of the our lovely garden that was finished in the spring. The weather this weekend was still really nice, a little bit of rain but it hasn't started to get too cold yet. So I decided it was a good time to make a start on preparing the garden for winter.

I began with the vegetable patch, clearing it all out and tidying up my strawberry and raspberry plants. I hope that they survive the winter! I also have some foxgloves that I planted from seed a couple of months ago. Some are in the borders and some are in pots, I'm keen to see if they survive and how they compare to the seeds which I'll plant in the spring.

We get a lot of fallen leaves in the garden and usually I'm out there picking them all up, this year I'm going to experiment with leaving the ones that fall in the borders and moving ones from the paths to the vegetable patch to see if they help the soil at all.

I pulled up my remaining tomato plants and picked off the last green tomatoes, hoping that if I leave them indoors in the sun then they might ripen. My tomatoes were amazing this year, I think it was a combination of the great weather and the new topsoil that we had added to the vegetable patch. I had so many that for a couple of weeks I was making a big batch of tomato soup every day and stocking up the freezer.

I've packed away some of the garden chairs because they are quite light and they blow around in the wind. But I want to keep my little table and one chair out on our breakfast patio, with the intention of sitting out there whenever it's warm enough. I had a lovely sit with my Kindle after all my hard work.

The canna lilies on the right have been amazing this year. I planted them in May after a recommendation by our garden designer and I wasn't quite sure about them, but they've been incredible. I cut back the flower heads just as they are starting to finish, and more and more kept appearing with plenty of buds still to flower. I know that they will die down soon and I'll have to decide whether to dig them up for the winter or to just wrap them in fleece and keep my fingers crossed for their survival!

I still need to plant my bulbs, I've never bought bulbs before and I went a bit mad at the garden centre a few weeks ago. I'm planning on putting some in the centre of my vegetable patch, which is always an awkward space for growing things as it's difficult to reach from the edges. Ideally I will end up with some lovely flowers which I can pick for the house. Then I'm just going to fill all my borders and spare pots and see what happens!

There's still an apple tree that needs pruning and lots of weeds growing between the stones in our beautiful front garden - I've got lots to keep me busy!