My gardening DIARY

MONDAY Thanks to some assiduous deadheading earlier, some of our roses are delighting us with late blooms. Although rose ‘Saunder’s White’ on the pergola flowered for two months, it’s finished for the season, but a rose I bought many moons ago that may be ‘Souvenir de Madame Léonie Viennot’ has reflowered.

TUESDAY It seems timely to prune some of our shrubs. One that needs close attention is physocarpus ‘Diabolo’. As a result of previous pruning, it produced about 30 new shoots, which I should have reduced to a maximum of 10 or so.

WEDNESDAY Many of our ferns shrivelled during the drought. The fronds of Matteuccia struthiopteris, the shuttlecock fern, shrank to nothing. Although most of our male ferns, Dryopteris filix-mas, have come through, the lady ferns, Athyrium filix-femina, looked so sad I had to cut them right back.

THURSDAY Recent torrential rain has put paid to seed-saving forays usually undertaken at this time of year. Thankfully some had been collected before the weather turned, including some particularly fine cosmos; tall, bushy and with large simple flowers.

FRIDAY Our Three Sisters bed has come to the end of its natural cycle. If we were to collect the produce from it during the last couple of months, they could form a feast. Sweetcorn galore, ‘Blauhilde’ beans and courgettes by the score.

SATURDAY Lettuces have been planted out and we sowed the seed from some old rocket seed pods into a big concrete veg trough; it germinated within three days. Sorrel is still growing steadily. I’m taking the older leaves to my dental hygienist for her pet tortoises!

SUNDAY There are two options with the new plants of anchusa ‘Loddon Royalist’ grown from root cuttings. They’re filling their 9cm pots now so they could be potted on or planted out. When in doubt do both and see which does best.