Looking at all those January gardening jobs?  A new year encourages us all to attack our work and leisure activities with renewed vigour, especially where our gardens are concerned.  Let’s face it, gardens aren’t at their best at this time of year, but there’s a lot of work to get on with if they’re going to look good once spring arrives.

By way of encouraging you to get out there in the cold and wet, Rosewood is sharing this beautiful January image from Eugene Grasset’s 1896 series ‘La Belle Jardiniere’ (The Beautiful Gardener).  Grasset worked in Paris during the Belle Epoque and was a pioneer of the Art Nouveau style.  The Belle Jardiniere prints are typical of his lovely work.  There’s one for each month, showing the gardening tasks for each stage of the year, so we’ll bring you the rest as we go through 2019.

January shows our gardener shovelling snow off the flower beds, with a lollipop holly tree in the foreground and a fountain heaped with snow or ice in the background.  Luckily there’s no snow here (not at the moment at least) but we still have plenty to do.  There’s always more clearing and tidying to do though – mushy old leaves and dead twigs abound at this time of year – so get your headscarf on and get outside!