After the Winter solstice, my mind turns towards the return of the sun to the northern hemisphere, which is always an exciting time and I think about what I am going to do with my garden in the coming year.

It's also a time to reflect on the success and failures, of course and to remember what not to do again!

This year has been a monumental year for me. My photograph business gained a fabulous contract, to do the event photography for the Bournemouth Chamber of Trade and Commerce, which I am having enormous fun doing plus getting married was just the icing on the cake.

I took up the challenge of growing flowers for the tables, which on probably the wettest year for many, was a bit disastrous. I did provide some sweetpeas, which in September are usually over, but the slow start for the garden, meant that I could cut the deliciously scented flowers which are one of my favourites.

If you ever decide to grow your own wedding flowers, then my advice would be, do go ahead with the idea, despite the challenges of mother nature. It's such a wonderful feeling, seeing what you have grown adorning the tables but do have a back up plan with your florist and have lots of beautiful flowers ready in the wings as the backbone to compliment the delicate flowers you have grown, plus you need tonnes more than you realise.

My garden is looking a bit forlorn at the moment. With all this wet weather I have not had the chance to sweep up all the leaves. The borders have had a bit of a tidy but over the coming months, if the weather allows, I need to get in and have a proper weed.

Now and over the next few weeks, is a good time to prune roses and I shall be pruning my apple tree for the first time too. 

My attention will then be turning to my vegetable plot. At the moment it's one big bed, which is a nuisance as I don't like treading on the soil as I do the 'no dig' method, so we have made more growing space and we are going to create smaller beds so I can reach to plant instead.

The vegetable bed is bare soil at the moment apart from a couple of Brussels sprouts plants which are left. My sprouts have been a complete triumph this year. I have never grown them before and they were so easy. My sandy soil is a bit light for them and they did start to lean when it got a bit windy and they didn't look very pretty as the slugs and snails liked to munch the leaves but left the sprouts alone, which meant more for us and thank goodness because the flavour was so much better than the shop bought ones, I shall never buy sprouts again!

May I wish you all a wonderful, happy and abundant 2013 in the garden xx