The first three weeks of September this year were as good as I can ever remember them. In fact one of my neighbours - a sprightly 90 year old - told me that the last time that he remembered a September as good as this was the Battle of Britain - 1940!
Read MoreThe summer is drawing to a close but it usually manages to do this gracefully throughout the month of September. I may live to eat my words – September has been known to be cold and wet and climate change is challenging all preconceptions and experience – but by and large it is a lovely month with daytime warmth, nights that are pleasantly cool and a special light that has real elegance.
Read MoreAlthough August is the month of holidays and high summer, it is also when the garden can start to become a little careworn. Actually this fading tendency tends to be worst at the beginning of the month and as we go towards September – at Longmeadow at least – it seems to pick up pace again.
Read MoreWhereas July 2018 was part of a long hot, dry spell, this year Longmeadow starts the month sodden after a particularly wet June. But, by British standards at least, July is always warm so midsummer rain means lushness and green everywhere along with the intense colours of the high summer borders.
Read MoreThe whole year reaches for and aspires to the month of June. The days reach their peak on the 21st and Midsummers Day - June 24th is the high point of the year. So the first, most obvious but far the most important thing is to enjoy your garden as much as possible in every way possible. Do not let a moment slip by.
Read MoreI do apologise for being rather late with this May update – but I have been away in America on the first trip of the ‘Monty Don’s American Gardens’ series that will be shown early next year. We filmed in Washington, Virginia, South Carolina, Miami, & Louisiana.
Read MoreLunch outside is the measure of good weather in Spring. The first day you can have lunch outside without freezing to death whilst simultaneously pretending that you having a great time and longing for a really hot fire to stand by, is either a freak of climate change or – April.
Read MoreOf all the months of the year March is the most fickle. If it flatters, it does so only to deceive. If it threatens, it just as quickly cajoles. Last March, here at home we had snow, ice and a wind from the arctic that cut through every layer of clothing like a knife.
Read MoreI know that many people find February a difficult month. Winter had gone on too long and Spring seems too far. But I like February. I like the way that it opens out and releases the valves for Spring. I like the way that the days reach out, stretching, limbering up.
Read MoreThere is a hawthorn in the boundary hedge of my garden. It is a scrubby affair, not much more than a bush really, but every mid-January the sun lingers just over the top of it before dipping down over the horizon across the fields.
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