Fall gardening here at Oak Hill Cottage. My flowers and vegetables are thriving in mid-September.

I decided to take some time off work as well as my little cottage garden here on top of Oak Hill in my home town Kalvsvik in southern Sweden. This place is mainly my workspace. Spending time here brings me a lot of joy, but it also reminds me of my job. I would say that the garden here at Oak Hill Cottage is kind of an outdoor office for me as a gardening influencer. Despite that, I wasn't actually planning on closing up completely while I was away. Rather, I was looking forward to spending a little time on projects that I haven't had much time for lately. My kids got sick though, and I thought it was easier to just stay at home for a while.

But today, I'm back in business. My first task is of course to take a little walk around the garden. I wanted to show you a bit more of what the garden here on Oak Hill looks like now in mid-September. Fall gardening doesn't have to be boring at all!

This is what the area closest to the house looks like right now.

Marigold, zinnias and pincushion flowers enjoy the sunshine. Fall gardening can be so magical!

My show-stopper bed in front of the house is lush and thriving! Forget about dead leaves and gray skies, this is what fall gardening can look like! Some of the vegetables in this bed have very bushy leaves, which will be great to mulch with.

This Créme de Cassis dahlia is amazingly beautiful. It's supposed to grow to 40-47 inches (around 100-120 cm) tall, and mine isn't even nearly that tall. They don't work very well in bouquets because of the short stalks.

Fall gardening with flowers

I was only gone for a week, which really isn't a big deal for this brilliant garden. The most demanding beds in this garden are covered with summer flowers, and I keep a solar-powered watering system here that takes care of the watering when I'm away.

The flowers are probably the most eye-catching feature of my garden this year. They grow just about everywhere, and I absolutely love it. But that's not all. I was also able to harvest plenty of vegetables this season. They just don't demand as much obvious attention as the flowers do of course! My new venture into growing more flowers has actually sparked an interest in creating bouquets. I try to pick flowers from my main flower bed here as often as I can. This bed has a number of different varieties growing in it, all grown for bouquets. I'm happy that my fall gardening also includes some lovely flowers!

Read more: Oak Hill Cottage Garden in September

This fun little side project has actually resulted in an Instagram account where I share pictures of my bouquets! Check out @skillnadensblommor if you want to know more. I already have 10 000 followers, and I'm so excited and grateful! I decided to celebrate my progress by recording a new video about the flowers in my garden. Many of my videos contain a lot of information and directions. This video is however basically just eye-candy. Sometimes, nothing beats just enjoying what we have in front of us! I hope you like it:

More about Oak Hill Cottage

I got started on my garden here on Oak Hill in March 2019, when all I had was a dry old lawn. If you want to know more about this project, you can check out my posts from Oak Hill here on the blog. Or why not take a look at the video series on my YouTube channel!

Fall gardening is for me all about harvesting the rest of my flowers and vegetables, as well as make a plan for next year. The plan needs to be done already now during fall, so that I know what I'm going to do with the plant parts I got this year. This material will as you probably know make great nutrient-rich soil after it decomposes. I mainly use it to mulch my beds.

Since I'm back in business and we're facing a brand new season, I wanted to ask you what you want to read about here on the blog? More on fall gardening, preparations for spring or something completely different? Let me know in the comments below!
/Sara Bäckmo