Summer is already closing down. The hedgerows are ripe with berries and haws, autumn cyclamen have nudged their heads through, and I’ve just spent a fortune on new school uniform. August has been intensely busy; not always enjoyably so. There’s been a lot of (too much) work, which makes school holidays a challenge. Living in the moment is difficult when there are too many calls on your time and energy, and this is particularly hard at this time of year, knowing that the light, the heat, the colour, will soon fade away into winter. So I’m looking forward to September, in the hope of a quieter few weeks, getting some essential tasks finished in the garden and allotment, and hopefully an Indian summer after the endless rain of July and changeability of August.
This post is a visual scrapbook of my August, including notes from the veg patch, my biannual pilgrimage to Perch Hill and Sissinghurst for creative inspiration, and other bits of messing about.
Allotment life
In short, after a lousy start, we’ve done OK on the allotment this summer. July rain helped enormously, creating an abundance of French and runner beans, excellent soft fruit (in particular the raspberries) and a good number of courgette. No kale this year, due to all the slugs and that rubbish compost, though there’s still chance of a winter harvest.
The dahlias, snap dragon and gladioli are particularly happy this year, meaning I’m getting regular car boot-fulls of cut flowers. The colour way is definitely on the pink/white spectrum, and next year I’d like more orangey-red-peachy shades plus some light, airy stems. Special note to the sweet peas, which have thrived in pots in the gloom, and are still flowering now even as we near September.
It should be noted that any modest success I have is put into proportion by my Mum and Dad, who could be market gardeners really. Every trip home I am given a veg box heaving with tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, aubergine, lettuce, sweetcorn…
Perch Hill, East Sussex
To Sussex, for the dahlia open day at Perch Hill (Sarah Raven’s cutting garden). It’s my fourth visit here, for this place is SO brilliant, so abundant, so creative in its planting combinations and colour, that it’s a joy to visit. Happily since learning that they have several full time gardeners (and pots of cash of course) I feel less bad about the comparison to my humble efforts.
Take aways for me this year are the coral/peach spectrum dahlias, which I would like more of, and the sheer number of pots with hot, vibrant shades of really quite common plants such as French marigold, achillea and fuchsia, which feels very achievable at home. The persicaria orientalis is amazing, towering over me with magenta colour.
My stand out plant was actually not a flower at all, but this humble kale, called ‘dazzling blue’ – I presume it’s a cross between a cavolo nero and a blue kale, and planted next to orange marigolds looked amazing.
Sissinghurst, Kent
On to Sissinghurst, the pinnacle of garden design – a place of romance, bohemia, artistry and of course serious hard graft for the people who keep it going. I wanted to soak up the beauty of the rose garden and see the newly planted dry garden (Delos) for the first time, but mainly my visit was to see what this place does at the end of summer, for Sissinghurst is famously a garden for June.
The answer is that the cottage garden is vibrant with jungle colour – oranges, reds, yellows, from more French marigolds, sunflowers, cannas and rudbeckias. Simply wonderful.
The other thing Sissinghurst does at this time of year is grow serious (I mean serious) amounts of fruit and veg. The kitchen garden is so vast and so productive that it’s kind of unreal; this isn’t your usual pretty-pretty National Trust veg patch, but a serious working market garden. That, and they coppice of course, a tradition that is rich in this part of Southern England but harder to find further north. As a family we are, naturally enough, extremely drawn to this sustainable method of wood production.
August living
Work, harvesting and gardens aside, there has been a bit of messing about. A weekend in the Peaks, a visit to London, a few days in a yurt…
Also not pictured: rain storms, tantrums (from both child and parents), mud, over-priced ice cream, emergency trip to Morrisons for aforementioned fish fingers, big fat CLOSED sign at Knole (ffs), traffic jams, horrendous numbers of work WhatsApp messages at evenings/weekends, guilt at not being more available for work, guilt over not being more available for family, slugs, weeds, washing piles, YouTube videos.
Also this month:
Harvesting: French beans (purple ones particularly productive this year), courgettes, raspberries, blueberries. Runner beans I am leaving to pod up, then harvest as we would borlotti. No greens/kales this year. Dahlias, cosmos, snapdragon, glads, self-seeded cornflowers, last sweet peas. Every trip home I am gifted tomatoes, excellent cucumbers, beans, aubergine, peppers, blueberries…the list goes on.
Allotment: Put down three green manures to compare their efficacy. Squash doing well. Hops and crysanthemums have both succumbed to some kind of insect/virus attached. Sunflowers nearly out, though one has died after having its stem stripped by enterprising wasps. Could do with more perennials…dahlias, oranges/red/coral shades, plus rudbeckia, helianthus, that kind of thing.
Cooking and eating: Camp food – fish-finger curry, chicken goujon tacos, baked plum pancakes, thermos of tea. Lots of plums. Prepping bags and bags of soft fruit, apples from Clives, roast tomatoes and beans, and sweet corn for the freezer. It takes hours but I’ll be grateful for it come February.
Also: Reading Sarah Raven’s book about the making of Sissinghurst. Went back to the Agatha Christie’s but after four Poirots in a row I need a break from all the murders. No time for telly. Wondering what happened to my creative brain, for it is now full of tasks, emails and deadlines.