In which new signs of life spring up all over the garden, including a surprise or two…

In which we discover fragrant sweet violets growing on a bank on ivy.

We have been yearning for so many weeks towards spring…

As autumn drifts into winter, the magical chrysanthemums are still giving us gorgeous bright crops of interesting flowers.

We've had our first frost, which blackened some of the dahlias and sparkled fleetingly on the grass, but it has no effect on the chrysanthemums, which are very tough and just keep on flowering.

I know that we are a flower garden, growing flowers for cutting, and that it takes a great deal of time and energy and focus to carry the thing through and to make a success of it…

We wake up to swathes of mist floating across the valley, and the soft hoots of owls in the lingering darkness - autumn is here.

So much to pick! It is pretty late in the year and we're approaching the end of our flower-picking season, but in the last couple of weeks the garden seems to have surged up with a great wave of flowery bounty for us to pick…

Lovely things are coming out of the garden. One of the very best parts of my job is that twice a week I have to pick flowers for us to bring home and test for vase life, enduring scent, and general appeal in the vase.

The flower beds have burst their banks, and all the floral woven cloths are fraying at the edges, blooms and seed heads and grasses all spilling and tumbling and filling the garden with loveliness.

This week the roses have started to put out their second flush of flowers, especially the hybrid musks and David Austin roses, and the high season perennials are in full swing.

Over the last few weeks, Lucinda, Emma and I have been gathering in little harvests of flowers and seed pods for drying, picking off the leaves, and bundling them up into little posies to dry in the workshop where we pack our letterbox flowers.

June is the month of roses, in particular of the old roses, and these are becoming our grand passion at the Flower Garden.

Wonderfully, the garden is in full flow, heaving with flowers and bustling with picking, planting, potting on, deliveries and collection of flowers. It is lovely.

It is late May but it feels like mid July in the garden - hot hot hot.

Early May is always the 'hungry gap' in the garden, the lull between the sturdy early spring party flowers.

It feels like high summer, except that the flowers are all wrong, the trees are not yet very leafy, and we still need to wrap up warm first thing in the morning.

How grateful we are that deliveries of flowers are continuing, and that we are able to keep the team on and the garden in good order.

These lovely uplifting photos were taken by Kit Young, on her second visit to the Flower Garden to document how things change here as nature pulls us through the course of a year.

This week we are feeling so very grateful for the natural beauty which surrounds us, and for the first flowers which are coming up in the garden ready to pick.