Stand back and take time to stare
Time to sit and stare – enjoy the long days in your garden
Ilove being in the garden at this time of year. The day length seems endless, encouraging breakfast alfresco and a late evening walk in a diffuse light that transforms the outline structure. In between, there is no continuous hard slog and sense of urgency in completing key projects, they’re for autumn, winter and spring.
Having completed the trimming and disposal of clippings from hedges that surround this garden, we’ve just gone into essential maintenance, harvesting, and summer appreciation mode. Time should be allowed to celebrate the fruits of our labours.
Gone is the urgency to dig and plant, unless it’s the gentle lifting of a potato haulm for an evening meal ingredient or, the settlingin of an irresistible potted, ornamental specimen spotted on a plant stall. Harvesting fresh vegetables and picking fruit daily is not work, it’s a pleasure. Watering plants outdoors and under glass, easily slots into the daily schedule. Even the lawns have become more gardenerfriendly, slowing growth and less demanding during the recent heatwave. So, there is time to stand and stare!
My current favourite spot is on a west-facing patio next to a mixed island bed, fashioned to create interest in an otherwise plain lawned area.
A mature, Osmanthus burkwoodii in standard form, is central. There’s a variegated Weigela with cream-margined leaves and large pink blooms, some of which persist into August. Miss Jessopp’s Upright (rosemary) is there, the attractive pink hardy fuchsia Hawkshead too. Red and pink penstemons, residents of proven hardiness, permeate the bed, as a swathe of oregano blooms attract the bees. Herbaceous star of the moment sits front of border and stands a mere 30cm tall. It’s the delightful blue Campanula carpatica.
Wallflowers in scarlet and gold were added for spring colour and rather than discard after flowering, we pruned them severely – and they responded. Now in their fourth summer, they,re offering stem cuttings and seed pods.
But what gives this favourite bed its current joie de vivre? It is the roses and old-fashioned pinks. As with all flowering plants, we are constantly removing fading blooms to encourage more, and they are responding positively. Their combined fragrance, from dawn to dusk, is a knockout.