The Best Time Of Year
Completely Intoxicating
I have this theory that all gardens, without exception, are lovely at this time of year. It’s certainly true for us -the garden almost never looks better than it does in June. But it’s not just gardens in the traditional sense - on my drive to work the verges are frothing with cow parsley and the embankments are sparkling with constellations of ox-eye daisy. I’m happy to be coming and going in daylight now but slightly sad that I’ll miss the display of the latter when they’re at their most arresting – at dawn and dusk, when they radiate a pale glow in the low light and earn their ‘moon daisy’ moniker. In amongst them are large swathes of red campion and errant but admittedly beautiful spires of oilseed rape. The dog roses are pushing out great arcing tendrils that will erupt into flower at any moment whilst the hawthorn seems to be having a marquee year and the display of blossom - not to mention the scent - is completely intoxicating. It’s enough to make you wonder why we garden at all, but this exhilarating display also contains the singular driving force at the heart of gardening for most of us.
Last week marked the completion of a huge job that started in earnest last November. That was when we began clearing out a 70 meter length of herbaceous border; removing completely plants that had either spread too freely, didn’t offer enough in the way of interest, or looked too tatty later in the season. Of course it’s not truly finished because nothing in gardening ever really is, but what I mean to say is that the last of 300 new plants is in the ground, and everything that’s staying has been divided and replanted. We’ve gone for tough plants in a soft palette of pink, mauve, burgundy, and white with silvery foliage and golden grasses that will hopefully give a long season of interest without requiring too much extra management. I’m looking forward to sharing it with you as it matures.
Looking towards the coming weeks, we’ll continue planting out the summer annuals as they become ready and continue direct sowing, sprinkling seeds of Eschscholzia, dill and Erigeron into nooks and crannies to give colour in late summer and autumn. I also sowed some courgette seeds on a whim a few weeks ago, so I’ll be on the lookout for gaps to drop those in to. Recently, I learned that you can plant dahlia tubers direct in June without growing them on first, so I’ve felt motivated to unpack last year’s tubers that were sadly frozen solid in December’s cold snap. It’s been an unpleasant task fishing around in the boxes of wood shavings to pull out the slimy, mouldy lumps but I have at least some that could be viable which is encouraging. As we tip headlong into the maelstrom of summer, our focus will turn to the hot, sweaty task of keeping the garden in good shape which means lots of weeding, clearing, tidying and deadheading. It’s a less glamorous part of the job and makes me think of garden writer Jane Perrone who brilliantly opines how much of gardening is, in reality, struggling under a hedge with a crowbar in the heat of summer. That is a much less romantic image than the one I started with, but I will nevertheless sign off here so I can get ready for our summer open days, beginning on Friday the 10th of June and running until the 25th. We do hope you will join us!
Kate