Enjoyable and educational day on the acre with lots of good work. A local gardening expert (trained at Wisley) gave a fantastic pruning class in the orchard, showing us the best length to cut at, teaching us about water shoots and how to create shape.

We have some fantastic fruit trees in the acre that will hopefully produce some great fruit with a little loving care. We've created some stake supports for those that need it and with the guidance on pruning the little orchard will look great in bloom come May.

More pyracantha was planted against the fenceline and a flowering cherry was planted in front of the therapy room. Hawthorns were also planted in the area adjacent to the old patio and cherry whips along the fence border, together with another beech tree.

The vegetable patches are beginning to look great, all we now need to do is wait for the frost to kill off the weeds before breaking the clods down and conditioning the earth with our compost.

The slatted border fence now offers better screening thanks to the team who trained the pyracantha against it and also carried out sterling work with their new found pruning skills.

We also finalised where the pond will be positioned and plan to have the hole excavated on Saturday. Nice to be getting to the end of the year with some real structure within the acre.

We also made a new bird feeders out of oranges, we'll see how they take to them! If not we'll make our own wooden ones which will also be fun.