A splendid summer produced a bumper crop of vegetables and fruit from the gardens, along with eggs, goats' milk and cheese.

Look along the flowers of the new, lower Bog Garden (including Astilbe, Primula, Lysimachia, Rodgersia, Iris sibirica & Scrophula) towards the bridge at the end of the Upper Water. Here the white flowers of Arum Lilies, Water Hawthorn and one of the many Cow Parsley relatives bring focus to the eye, whilst the subtle green of the big leaved American Skunk Cabbage and Umbrella plant frame the bridge.

The Frog Pool. One of five new water features, the frog jets water into the pool in the entrance courtyard. Other new waterspouts include the Spire Surprise, the Serpent and the Cauldron, the Teak Trough and the Sunburst Pool.

We've succeeded in bringing tulips into flower for the third consecutive year, but only on our Scree Slope which is probably the only large well drained area in the whole garden at Bocombe. Rainfall is high most of the year on the north west coast of Devon, which provides ideal conditions for mosses, lichens and other plants that like humid air and moist soil, like the many Bog Garden plants that thrive in the bottom of our valley such as Ligularia and Iris ensata/sibirica. So tulips in flower year after year are an achievement for us!

The highly sculptured trunk of our largest Metasequioa glyptostroboides (Dawn Redwood) planted as a small tree in 1999. The buds on this deciduous conifer are struggling to emerge in the still cool spring weather. The other dozen Metasequioas forming this grove of trees were grown from seed at Bocombe around the same time, so are somewhat smaller! Metasequoia glyptostroboides were only identified as fossil trees until a small stand of them was discovered growing in China during the middle of the last century.

In the frost prone meadow at the bottom of the valley, in what will be deep shade of the tree lined lane, the tight, pale yellow flower heads of Petasites japonicus giganteus have popped just out of the ground. Misleading small eruptions of flowers that will be followed in a month or so by the huge leaves that give this plant its name!

Almost at the same time as the snowdrops, flowers of Chrysosplenium macrophyllum appeared in early February. Not only an early plant to flower, but the leaves thrive in deep moist shade the whole year. A corner of a step, bottom right, gives you a hint of the scale of the plant.

Even the snowdrops were slow to emerge this winter and had only just appeared by the end of January.

The first frost of the winter at Bocombe (yes,not until the very start of December) was quickly followed by a sprinkling of snow. It wasn't that cold as the Arum Lily (Zantadescia aethiopica "Crowborough") half withstood this first blast of the cold winter to come. The new, large Gothic Urn can be seen in the distance along Bocombe Chase.