Now the weathers getting cooler its time to start thinking of bird care. With natural habitats getting scarcer and sources of food hard to come by, wild birds rely more and more on generous gardeners to provide food, fresh water and somewhere to shelter. We are always amazed at how often we have to top-up our stores of bird food - our customers must be a really caring bunch. Gardeners can also benefit from encouraging birds into the garden.

As well as being a pleasure to watch they eat many pests including caterpillars, slugs and snails. They help to pollinate fruiting plants and can also eat large quantities of weed seeds. So don’t forget to help them out especially when it gets freezing cold....

At John Browns we’ve been busy putting in an extended range of speciality and local foods. We noticed how much you all like the ranges we were keeping and how popular the food area at our Cadnam centre is so we thought we could offer just as exciting and interesting a range at John Browns and also include a really good range of gluten free and dairy free food. Carrie has been very busy over the last few months picking out a really bespoke range of gastronomic delights, we have all been forced to try samples in the office – It’s been terrible! My favourites are Zaramamas popping corn cobs – The ears look so ornamental with different varieties in blue and red as well as the traditional corn and are such good fun to prepare and pop. They’re pretty yummy too.

This month is your last chance to prepare your lawn for the winter. I treated my little lawn at the end of September with Evergreen Autumn Lawn care. This has a special balance of feed to strengthen the roots up for the winter and it’s on another one of our seasonal special offers. Next year I’ll use the 2 in 1 which also kills any moss competing with the grass but as it’s such a new lawn I don’t have any moss yet. I’ve been helping my Dad with his lawn which we scarified to get all the old dead stuff out. We have a motorised scarifier but if you need some exercise you can pull it all out with a lawn rake! It was amazing how many bags of dead grass, weeds and moss we got out of it. After a couple of weeks to settle it too will get an autumn feed – Dad always gets comments on how nice his lawn looks so well worth an afternoon in Autumn and a few hours in spring with a feed and weed treatment.

Last week we started taking deliveries of the new seasons soft fruit plants and are running a great offer on Blueberries – 2 for £15. The berries of this plant (Latin name Vaccinium corymbosum) are a well known super-food containing stacks of vitamin C and anthocyanins, both compounds which are thought to have anti-aging effects and cancer and heart disease fighting properties amongst other benefits. They are also very tasty! Blueberries originate from North America and are related to Cranberries and the European Bilberry. Easy to grow either in the ground or in pots where I find they fruit better – Just ensure they are in an acidic or ‘ericaceous’ soil that is damp at all times. As well as the attractive blue berries, the leaves turn a vivid red in the autumn giving them ornamental value in the garden.

This week it’s all that glitters in the centres as we get our Christmas decorations and gift stock ready for sale. Just as last year, we have a team of Christmas elves visiting each centre over the next few weeks to make some beautiful, inspirational and very shiny displays to get us all into the festive spirit. With this colder and wet weather we’re having we’re enjoying the cheer it brings.

Its scary how quickly the nights are drawing in now so I’m making the most of the daylight hours at the weekends to complete some jobs in the Garden. I’ve got all of my new borders mulched with a good thick layer of well rotted manure so that the worms can work it in for me over the winter and the veg I planted in July is doing really well. I’ve had my first few leaves of chard and lettuce and it won’t be long before the beetroot is ready either. The new lawn has taken really well, this week-end I’ll give it its Autumn dressing to strengthen the roots for the winter - at least I won’t have to worry about watering it this week!