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August brings a lull in my garden. It’s a time for gathering in produce from the allotment and picking cut flowers but there’s a sense that this is it for this year. As I potter my thoughts are already turning to next year. Now is the perfect time to take stock of the garden and allotment whilst they’re at their peak. It’s difficult in the depths of winter to remember what plant is where when all that is left is a soggy clump of brown twigs, so I like to take pictures of what has worked and what hasn’t to jog my memory later on. I have several notebooks with notes scribbled in them of plants which have thrived and those which I won’t be growing again. I’m also noting down the flowers which have been my favourites this year on the cut flower patch. The crab apple, now in full leaf, is casting too much shade on the back of the garden and needs thinning with the crown lifting a little before next spring. I’m going to take some photographs of it so that I can work out which branches need to come out when it comes to pruning time.
The summer solstice has always been a significant point in the calendar – the point where the days gradually start to get shorter and we move towards winter once more. Or, as my dad would say, ‘It’s all downhill from here’. I can’t imagine where I get my pessimistic gene from.
One garden which has stayed with me since I’ve come home from Chelsea Flower Show is the one Sean Murray produced as the winner of TV’s recent Great Chelsea Garden Challenge. His brief was to design a garden illustrating some of the key points in the RHS’s latest campaign, Greening Grey Britain. One garden which has stayed with me since I’ve come home from Chelsea Flower Show is the one Sean Murray produced as the winner of TV’s recent Great Chelsea Garden Challenge. His brief was to design a garden illustrating some of the key points in the RHS’s latest campaign, Greening Grey Britain.
Now the bright morning star, dayes harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flowry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose
From: Song on May Morning, by John Milton (1608-1674)
When it comes to the weather gardeners are rarely happy. The last month has been a prime example. None of us could have imagined such fabulous weather, as most of the UK enjoyed glorious sunshine and cloudless blue skies for much of April. It’s the sort of weather most of us would be happy with in midsummer let alone in spring. But, in a month bereft of the spring showers with which it is synonymous, how many gardeners, whilst delighted to have ditched the layers of clothes in favour of sunhats and factor 30, were secretly hoping for some rain?