July
Japan, tender annuals and caving to irrigation.
This month has felt a bit more balanced than the mild chaos of June, with a bit of a holiday, a bit of flowers and a bit of dancing, all scored by Olivia Rodrigos latest release, helping me to relive my teenage heartbreak fantasy - so much so, I barely registered that the World Cup was on. Apparently we did quite well?
The first half of the month was spent in Japan. Will was dancing out there and I managed to use my points and tag along. Based in Tokyo for two weeks, I stole him away from the theatre to get in long weekend’s in both Hokkaido in the north and Okinawa in the South. Our main reason for travelling so far north was to visit the Tokachi Millennium Forest, an incredible place which we both loved and found utterly inspirational. I wrote about it earlier this month, and you can read the article here if you’d like to see more.
On returning from Japan, I finally succumbed to putting out the irrigation. I’d held off for as long as I felt I could but with months without substantial rain it all just started to feel a little impossible. I have a system that can cover all the rose beds, but they’re actually doing better than expected without it already gearing up for their next flush, so I had a shuffle around and moved it to the dahlias instead. I’m teaching a workshop with my friend and floral author extraordinaire Arthur Parkinson in August, for which I’d like to take buckets of said dahlias to, so it feels justified.
I did an experiment and left all of last years dahlias in the ground over winter, seeing how they’d fair spending the cold months in my clay soil. I piled on barrow loads of wood chip in November to help keep them warm, and was more than pleasantly surprised when around 50% of them came back at the start of June. Now, what might fill the rest of that prime real estate of irrigated bliss? Next years biennials! I’ve been waiting for a dip in the heat to plant out the foxgloves and sweet rocket and this week, temperatures dropped just enough and I managed to slip them in.
I’m incredibly proud of them; they’re the healthiest and most robust foxglove plugs I’ve ever grown, and I think a big reason for this success is that I sowed them much earlier than I normally would, right in the middle of May. I worked backwards from when I knew we were going away and made sure they’d have a good 8 weeks of being at home to bulk up, as usually, I’d sow them in the middle of June, then either work away or go on holiday and at that point, they’re just too small to fend for themselves and they’d perish, and I get very sad and frustrated. Galvanised by this new success, I wanted to keep giving them such care so they can continue to put on good growth throughout the summer before lifting them to intersperse them amongst the roses in autumn, so I’ve turned this new free space into a nursery bed, lining them up along the irrigation, hoping this will be enough to get them through August. It all sounds a bit labour intensive now that I’m writing it down, but I love a foxglove, and the vision of creating my own homage to Sissinghurst with their spires piercing through the domes of roses sustains me when I think it’s all going a bit far. Fingers crossed.
The tender annuals are doing exceptionally well, basking in the heat and seemingly unaffected by our lack of rain - tagetes, cosmos, coreopsis, amaranth - all doing excellently. Long time favourite Rudbeckia ‘Sahara’ and new mix ‘Sherry Brandy’ are pumping out stems of lusciously coloured daisy flowers - caramels, rusty browns, coppers and vibrant reds, the petals all surrounding perfectly formed teddy-bear-nose centres. Along with the zinnias they’ve been my top annuals this year, and I wouldn’t be without them. They’ve been joyous to create with, weaving them amongst stems of fragrant fennel and textural grasses.
A fail which I really thought I’d gotten on top of this season is managing the docks and thistles. They’ve been my nemesis since taking over the site 2 and a half years ago, and this year, with an increase in regular mowing and deadheading I really thought I’d nailed it, or as close to it as possible to be able to turn the tide on this relationship. It turns out that even if you cut both plants down once they’ve started flowering, even if they’re only flowering a tiny bit, they’ll still dry and go to seed, meaning I’m currently surrounded by floating white thistle seeds and crunching dock seeds underfoot. It’s my error for not being better with my housekeeping, as I thought leaving the cut stems on the path would be fine, and feeling pressed for time with a long list of jobs to do, I thought what I was doing would be sufficient. As my punishment for not keeping everything as tidy as it should be, I’ve been collecting wheelbarrow upon wheelbarrow of seed heads this week, and even though the damage has been done and I’ve resigned myself to more weeding over the next few months, I’m hoping next year I can do better. Even though I’m not touring at the moment, I still feel time is the thing I could do with an endless supply of.
I am however hoping I’ve saved the hellebores in time from a thistley fate. I’d put up some shade cloth to offer some woodland planting some relief from the sun, but in doing so, blocked my view of the hellebores which are nestled underneath the hornbeam hedge. I hadn’t noticed how bad the weeds were around them (so bad there wasn’t a single hellebore plant to be seen!), but an hour of weeding quickly sorted it, before realising how dry they had become. I was hoping with my thick mulch and dappled shade from the hedge they’d have been in a better state, but this prolonged drought has really taken its toll. I’m very much a ‘plant and fend for itself’ type of gardener, however, hellebores are an investment, a 2L potted plant being on the more expensive side, and they flower at such a vital time of year that I’d really like to keep them going, so out came the hose and another barrow load of mulch, and I’m hoping they’ll soldier on through.
Design work revs up again in August which I’m very much looking forward to, alongside some perennial seed sowing which I’ll share more about next week.
Thanks as always
Hey new follower here! Interesting that you sowed your biennials early. I always sow on June 1st and trying to plant them out right now here in baked Wiltshire is a nightmare. May could be the way forward! Thanks for sharing