Tips and Advice

My garden enters August this year touched by the hottest weather ever recorded in the UK. In fact the heatwave did not last for long, but it was shocking in its intensity. However the real problem is not heat but lack of rain. A dry summer comes off the back of a dry Spring which was preceded by an exceptionally dry winter and autumn before that. These things are all relative - there are parts of the world that would regard the rainfall here in the past 12 months as positively sodden - but it is making us recalibrate what we can and cannot grow here in our gardens.

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One of the oddities of climate change is that July in this garden on the western side of the UK is increasingly becoming a cloudy month, which often means it is quite wet. However, despite the lack of sun it is always reasonably warm so the garden is lush and green.

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After three years absence Chelsea came back to its late May slot, bigger and busier than it has been for a long time. After 6 twelve-hour days, 6 programmes and an intensity of scrutiny from the 130 thousand visitors, I arrive back to the peace of home exhausted and facing a new month and a new range of plants in the garden.

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We go into May this year with the ground parched and dry after another very dry and quite cold April. This has been the case here for the past three years and seems to be becoming a pattern.

The result is, on the one hand, very pleasant for a gardener too used to dealing with rain and mud and cold clammy soil at a time of year when every instinct is to plant and sow. But on the other hand it sits uneasy with the bountiful display of the blossom, flowering bulbs and zinging new leaves.

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There is an irony in this as despite the cold snaps, much of April is filled with long, sunny days with the tulips breaking hourly into radiant flower and above all else, the world turning green.

This April green is nature at its most potent. There is a sense that every cell of every living thing is burgeoning and growing and breaking into the freshest most vibrant green possible - regardless of ice, snow, wind or rain. As I get older this becomes more precious, more miraculous.

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Everything changes, but nothing changes so much as the weather in March, here in Britain - and especially so here in this particular corner of Western England, close by the Welsh border. March is likely to have bright sun, gales, rain, hail, snow, ice and often all on the same day. It is as though the weather is trying its hand, seeing what it can do before settling into Spring.

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We might have snow, ice and wind in February but none of that stops all the fabulous first bulbs from appearing and breaking into bud. Snowdrops, crocus, early daffodils, primroses, intense early irises, muscari and scillas all break into flower so that however wintry the weather, the garden starts to look and feel like spring.

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Happy New Year - and let's hope that 2022 is better for all of us than 2021 which was a tough one for all of us.

But whatever the year - and this is t my 67th new year so I am getting quite experienced at them - I greet January with a mixture of relief and hope. Hope of course for all the possibilities ahead but profound relief that December and all the grim, dark greyness of a north European midwinter is now gone.

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December is a dismal month for gardeners. If any of the shards of autumn still cling at its outset, they are all discarded by the end. There are leaves to gather and perhaps trees, and hedges to plant but truculent weather, the shortness of the days means that in truth little is asked of the gardener - and very little given back.

But when the weather is fierce and frost dips into double figures the garden becomes bejewelled and still, dry shod underfoot and the air clean and crisp - and I forgive it its December dowdiness.

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For those of us that are very affected by light November is never a good month. Our Northern sky darkens daily and by the end of the month it is fully dark outside by 5pm and the light levels on all but cold, frosty days are terribly low, even at midday. The answer is to get outside, whatever the weather, and walk, work, tidy - do anything to engage with this season as it fades and accept its limitations. It will pass and is a necessary waning in order that next Spring might come.

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October is really the beginning of the horticultural year. The garden draws to a graceful end in September - this year made unusual by the addition of an unseasonal and rearranged Chelsea Flower Show held in glorious weather - but in October it is time to start planning and preparing for next Spring and summer. What you do now - and some things that you do NOT do - will make a huge difference to your 2022 garden.

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September can still be glorious in its own distinctive fashion. In fact, September is one of my favourite times in the garden. This has as much to do with the light as the potential heat of the sun.

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August is really a new season and carries the weight of summer and the seeds of winter. Much of the garden is coming to full fruition with flowers, fruits and vegetables all ripening and acquiring a fulsome quality that no other month matches.

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Mid summer, middle of the year, mid season. But in fact July is the beginning of a new year for me with my birthday falling at the end of the first week. It is time both for celebration of the beauty of an English garden at its best and also to take stock. In gardening terms it is a period of transition. The garden changes and there is a real shift in the borders. The easy lightness of May and June is replaced by a weightier heft from more voluptuous plants.

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