High summer in a Scottish country garden
- The Gardener
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Midsummer, and the limes (Tilia) in the Woodland are humming. The trees are peppered with tiny but lightly-scented white flowers, attracting in bees from miles around. So many indeed that if you stand beneath, or even near, you can clearly hear their continuous hum.
You can always count on a combination of school sports days, end of term celebrations and the Royal Highland Show to trigger a change in the weather, and this year was no exception! I’m not objecting, though, as we are needing the rain, and natural rainfall seems to create a vibrancy in new plantings that no amount of lovingly-carried watering cans can replicate! When we do need to water (and the pots are watered every 4 days or so) we don’t generally use much from the tap; instead we plunder the goldfish pond, giving the fish an ensuing, but welcome, water-refresh and the plants some additional nutrients.
All the bedding’s now in, with the leftover dahlias and cosmos now settled into the cuttings bed. Indeed, the cosmos are starting to bloom and it won’t be long until the dahlias too do their late summer thing.
The area which can be a challenge to water in summer is the Fernery, and this is mainly due to the ferns here being in pots. Ideally we would have them in the ground but we need some plants to be more elevated, hence they live in terracotta pots. Because they are very fibrous-rooted and terracotta ‘breathes’, they need quite a bit of watering to prevent them from drying out. If a fern dries out even temporarily, it’s probably curtains for the season as the fronds will gradually (as if to make a point about your albeit-fleeting neglect), and one by one, go brown (although they generally recover in time for the following year). The shuttlecock ferns are proving particularly challenging this year (in contrast to the unrestricted ones growing away in the shade border). Some of their fronds have turned brown, despite best efforts. In an attempt to counteract this, but also particularly to help the baby tree ferns get established, we have been giving the Fernery residents a daily shower with a misting sprayer. Every two weeks or so, we’ve been mixing in a very weak solution of soluble fertiliser just to keep them in good heart, and we are seeing a real difference. The ferns seem much happier, are larger, much more lush and more vigorous, with the shuttlecocks continuing to throw out new shoots to replace the brown ones, so we’ll continue this practice.
While on pots, the ornamental pots by the goldfish pond are looking really established now and bursting with colour, and we’re going to have a great display of agapanthus too this year, thanks to all the sunshine we’ve had. Some have started to flower, the blue Headbourne Hybrids, which I grew from seed around 20 years ago. It won’t be long until the blue and white A.africanus also break bud. They came from Madeira many years ago as rooted cuttings- not something you can do these days. We also have some pots of a small dark blue deciduous variety. They’re fine but not much more exciting than an allium, to be honest. Some of these new varieties lack the drama of the species, I find, but each to their own!
Talking of drama, last year’s Miss Willmott’s Ghost seedlings are flowering all around the garden at present. Their silvery and unexpectedly large and exotic flower heads are truly quite other-worldly and very different to the various other Eryngium species we have in the garden.
The borders are now in their midsummer phase, with shrub roses, Phlomis, yellow loosestrife, mallow and Jacob’s ladder sharing the stage, although the foxgloves have been exceptional this year. They have been flowering for weeks. It’s also good to see the Digitalis ferruginea, the rusty foxglove, with its yellow brown blooms coming into flower. We grew this from seed last year and its shiny strappy foliage varies significantly from the downy, matt, rounded leaves of the traditional biennial foxglove
Round in the Drying Green garden, we have a large area of white Shasta daisies coming into bloom, which hoverflies, bees and butterflies relish. From about now, this area of the garden often attracts a disproportionally large number of butterflies. Granted we have several buddleias and other butterfly-attracting plants such as Joe Pie weed, but this garden is well sheltered by the house and the garden walls to the west, north and east, and by a 6’ beech hedge to the south, allowing the garden to ‘super-heat’ on sunny days. I am predicting a good butterfly year after last year’s disappointment, with all the sun and warmth we’ve been having and recently came across a large number of red admirals, small tortoiseshells and whites feeding on knapweed in a sheltered and sunny area just outside the walled garden.
While I’m on nature notes, I’m happy to report that the swallows at the front door are now feeding their first brood of three chicks, and that we have two pairs of nesting house martins on the east and west gables of the house. Indeed, judging by the aerial antics over the lily pond this week, I think at least one of these broods might have fledged.
Looking at the gardener’s task list at the moment, we’ve moved on from the frantic spring merry-go-round of frenzied hoeing, planting and mass-staking to the more measured, contemplative role of editor or conductor, where, if you get it right, visitors and family members can’t really work out just how you spend so long outside not appearing to do anything but perhaps conceding that the compost heap is still slowly continuing to grow! I do like this role of conductor, where the focus is on ensuring that the horticultural equivalent of the single piccolo can be heard against the unrelenting barrage of the brass section. It’s about primping and propping, removing stealth weeds such as sticky Willie (or cleavers if you prefer) or preventing that femme fatale, the lady’s mantle, from committing suicide in front of the mower’s blades. And of course we approach the peak season of dead-heading - lupin heads and roses, as well as annual ornamentals in the pots. It’s a satisfying time of the year, as you can cover the ground quite quickly.
Finally, its transformation time in the Walled Garden, where we have been strimming down the long grass where the spring bulbs grow in the Old Orchard and Summerhouse gardens. Long grass can look lovely up to a point - usually the end of June, where a combination of heavy rain and wind generally flattens it, never to bounce back. It’s around six weeks since the last lot of bulbs flowered here, so sufficient time has now elapsed to let the bulbs re-absorb their energy from their strappy leaves. After a day of strimming, raking and hay haulage, the garden has a new, more sophisticated look with larger lawns which we’ll maintain for the rest of the season.
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