The bright light in these few high months of summer is too intense for looking at the garden during the day. Our looking times are first thing, when the light is low, and then again later as it dips into the head of the valley. During the middle part of the day we go about the activity of tending and it isn’t until around six, when the light changes, that the garden starts to register once again. If we can, we down tools and make the time to take in the results of our hard work, made visible by the sun tilting into a long evening. Time to watch the colour change as the light yellows and then fades to blue and the dusk of gloaming. 

This is a time of observation and the garden actively settles into a different energy. If we have had a breeze, it often drops now and in this stillness the handover from the day to the night shift begins. From the activity of bees and the drone of hoverflies to the silence of the moths and bats that come to work the evening. Many plants come into their own at this time and the violets and the blues, which by day have sat back in bright light, begin to pulse and vibrate with an energy all of their own. In the main garden the wicks of violet veronicastrum become a point of gravity and rise above pools of denim blue Nepeta ‘Blue Dragon’ and the electric indigo of Salvia patens.

Up by the house the Eryngium x zabelii ‘Big Blue’ and the glaucous foliage of the sea kale light this space unexpectedly and remind you how important it is to plan for this last hour of daylight. This is the time when whites, bleached in bright daylight, also come into their own. White reflects the light differently, without the reverberation of the blues, but with equal luminosity. Tapering white willowherb, galega and the far mounds of the Persicaria alpina along the ditch throw back what light is left in the gloaming.

The evening primrose, by contrast, actively engage with the evening, unravelling their ephemeral flowers which they have kept tightly scrolled to render them all but invisible during the day. The unfurling happens without you really noticing, but it does so quickly, like a scene change that comes when the intensity of the day is off them. We grow Oenothera stricta ‘Sulphurea’ here and love equally the harvest moon lemon of their evening opening as the soft apricot of the fading flowers by morning. My original plants came from Marina Christopher of Phoenix Perennials over ten years ago, but they are so much part of this place now seeding about where they want to be. They are short-lived, flowering best in their second and third years before dwindling, but in that time, they are profligate with their seed, which is fine and easily finds its way into cracks and crevices. 

I have never seen them in their native South America, but imagine they would like to find the between places where the ground is open and free-draining and where there is plenty of sunshine. They need open ground on the edge of things to do well here too and they are interesting for always throwing their plentiful seed from tall wands of flower, out and beyond the main company. Here they form a front line of pioneers and they have done so well in the rubble around the barns that we knock out most of the seedlings with a hoe in the spring and leave just a handful. This is all you need, because although almost imperceptible by day they glow and make their own space as evening falls.

Dip your face into a flower in the still of evening and you are rewarded with a delicate fragrance which must exist to aid moth pollination. Re-visiting the plants again in the morning they will still be there to greet you, but by the time the light brightens and you become aware that it is time to stop looking and get on with the day you notice that they are already retiring. Waiting for the best light and for when you’ll next be ready to see them.

Words: Dan Pearson | Photographs: Huw Morgan

Published 1 July 2023