Nobody does a summer's day like England; but when we get it right (alas those days are so few) an English summer's afternoon takes some whacking.
I had the pleasure of taking off for the afternoon to visit a beautifully sited wall garden on the Surrey/Sussex borders. It is only in it's seventh year and there is some promising activity going on. Lovely long pathways flocked with lavender; not entirely innovative but it's a proven formula and works effectively. Good old blousy roses were doing a great job; I espied the lively brash 'American Pillar' flowering its heart out as it always does. A lovely raised narrow rill flanked the south side of the garden, planted with water lilies that now the heat of the sun had gone, had closed their flowers and were dozing in the early evening shadows. Water features are rarely executed well, but this was the right size and scale for the garden and added a calm serenity as evening fell. One of the things that was noticeable that there might well be a dearth of colour or interest from summer into autumn.
If you know that your garden falls into a sort of dullness in summer, try the old trick of growing some annuals in pots that you can plunge into the gaps that inevitably occur in once the spring borders have done their thing. Should your garden lacks any 'oompah' in autumn, go out and buy some great autumn flowering plants now to jazz it up a bit. How about the deep burgundy Penstemon 'Blackbird' the grass skirted golden yellow flowers of inula hookeri or those very effective brown drumstick flowers of Helenium 'Autumn Lollipop?" My new book 'BORDER FLOWERS' ( available from WH Smith, Amazon and all the usual suspects) wil give you some great ideas and the plants are arranged by season, so it's easy-peasy to choose something fab.
Keep an eye on the watering front; these hot spells take their toll and the winds too make soil dry out that much quicker. By the way keep dead nettles (lamium) well watered in this weather as they are the first to fall prone to powdery mildew.
But most of all enjoy your garden this summer. As Henry James was so fond of saying:
"Summer afternoons - the most beautiful words in the English language. "
Hear hear, Henry.
