June and July: the bumper summer issue

Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep.

Le Corbusier

I was determined to post about June before the first week of July was over. My intentions were good, but somehow…

So here’s two months for the price of one. 

Planting flowers in the sunshine

Our first flurry of visitors – 3 sets in 12 days – came and went. It was wonderful to see them after a long time apart. But once they’d gone I thought, “great, now I can finish planting up my summer pots and hanging baskets”.

And the weather said “Not so fast”. 

But eventually the rain gave it a rest, and they were nicely planted and distributed around the courtyard and patio.

Judging by how quickly some of them disappeared, it seems I’d essentially laid on a grand buffet for slugs and snails!

Note to self: they seem to like bacopa, calibrachoa, coleus and petunias. On the other hand, the pelargoniums, lobelia, osteospermum, fuchsia and impatiens have got through relatively unscathed.

Let there be space and light

Much was made of the beautiful trees here when we were buying Woodridge. I talked about it in my first post on this blog. The previous owner loved the story and appeared really proud of the trees. Why then allow them to become swamped and pushed out of shape by thuggish shrubs like laurel?

We think the answer lies in his quest for privacy – anything he could do to prevent neighbours from seeing into his house and garden, he did. Sadly, that meant sacrificing some beauty in the interest of fast growing screening.

We’re on a mission to reclaim that beauty. Trees need space and light, not only to grow but to look their best.

We’re very pleased with our first attempt. We have a lovely variegated maple (Acer platanoides drummondii) near the house. It’s 9 or 10 metres high and it had a huge laurel surrounding the trunk and pushing up into the branches (and incidentally reducing the light into our living room). It had become a dark and shapeless clump. 

We got out our brand new cordless extending pruner (so much fun!) and carefully reduced the height of that laurel shrub until the acer was released from it.

Now the acer stands alone so you can clearly see the form of its trunk and branches, and those delicate leaves don’t get lost in the mass of foliage.

It’s not just the big trees

There’s no such a thing as too many trees, right? 

Wrong.

As my friend Caroline J reminds me, a weed is just a plant in the wrong place. And the same goes for trees. Particularly the self-seeded ones that land in random spots and grow. Or the deliberately planted ones that are allowed to get out of hand.

There’s plenty of both here. They crowd onto steps, lean into fences, stand in the middle of grassy paths. Yew trees bully flower beds. And laurels … well, as you know, there are laurels everywhere.

The previous owner seems fundamentally incapable of cutting back or cutting down anything, regardless of how annoying or out of place it is. Some of this may come from that intense desire for privacy. Maybe he loves over-exuberant growth. Simon reckons he thought it was funny to have to bushwhack your way to the washing line. Or he simply couldn’t see the wood for the trees.

Whatever the reason, these trees need sorting out. Some of them are only temporarily small – a self-seeding sycamore can grow half a metre a year and eventually be over 10 metres high and 8 metres wide. Beeches, holly and others might be slower, but they can’t live shoulder to shoulder.

So we’ve started a campaign of digging out, cutting down or moving small trees that just don’t belong. It’s carefully planned – we understand the need to keep a garden going and replenish the stock. But even after we’ve finished there’s no danger of deforestation, I promise.

It’s probably worth mentioning that we’re in a conservation area so major tree works need planning permission. Everything we’ve done so far is within the legal exemptions for permission – based on height and girth of trees. If anything bigger needs work, we’ll do the right thing and get permission.

A bountiful crop of tomatoes?

With the greenhouse now empty of flowering plants, I’ve made room for tomatoes. There’s a collection of less common varieties from Sarah Raven and some tumbling cherry tomatoes that did really well in hanging baskets last year. I also have a dozen chilli plants to keep the tomatoes company.

Not having used a greenhouse like this before, I have great expectations. I’ve been hoping for high yields – maybe even some tomatoes that ripen before the summer salad season is over. In 2 months the plants have really put on some growth. But by the end of July I’m not seeing a lot of fruit setting there. I’ll just continue to feed and encourage them, and see what happens.

Can everyone just calm down a bit please?

I think we’ve established that it’s a pretty full garden. And getting fuller by the day. Everything is just growing and growing. The paths above the house – in the area we call the woodland garden – are getting narrower with the overhanging growth. On a wet day it’s easy to get drenched, even if it isn’t strictly raining, just by walking around.

The border we planted up in May is doing well and has started flowering. Some of the shrubs seem to double in size from one week to the next. It’s all rich and lush and I still can’t quite believe all this abundance is really ours.

 But (could you feel a ‘but’ coming?) while it’s all good and lovely (and it is!), sometimes gardening simply feels like a battle against all the growth. 

And that’s before I even mention the weeds. Laura and I have been throwing everything we’ve got against the nettles, bracken, cow parsley, rosebay willowherb and bastard bindweed. Strimming growth, cutting off flower heads before they set seed, digging out roots and taking the battle to the enemy. We’re also treating berberis, holly and ivy as members of the Axis of Evil. 

We’re filling the compost bins at a prodigious rate. The enemy is in retreat. But it’s way too soon to unfurl the “Mission Accomplished” banner. It’s going to be a long war of attrition.

Flowering this month

It’s not all weeds and wanton destruction. June and July have had plenty of flowers: late rhododendrons, roses, irises, cornus, hydrangea, lilac, day lilies, geraniums, hypericum, borage, buttercups, dahlias, and honeysuckle. I think the roses, and maybe the hydrangeas, deserve their own blog posts to show off the gorgeous flowers but that’s for another day. For now, here’s a selection of summer flowers.

Other jobs for the month

As usual, Laura has been pressing on with most of the hard work (if you don’t count our forestry):

• cleared more of front borders
• mowed and strimmed lawns
• cut back, strimmed and cleared pathways and overhanging shrubs across the garden
• cut lonicera, privet and rose hedges
• weeded lower veg beds
• cut back and pruned out of control Weigela, Forsythia and Berberis
• trimming hawthorn trees at top of garden
• weeded buttercups out of lower lawn