The last few weeks of whipping wind and rain have been painful. It has torn at the poplars at the bottom of the slope, their enormous limbs as heavy as they ever will be in leaf weighted by rain. The tell-tale crack and pregnant pause before the impact saw three limbs the size of trees come crashing to earth. A whole tree gave up a few nights later, to lay between and fortunately not on my young hornbeams, as if the fall had been planned. We will wait until autumn before beginning the enormous task of clearing the wood from where it has shattered amongst the slumbering snowdrops for fear of the weight still up there in the remaining trees and this not being the last limbs down. 

The garden has stood the test of our exposed position remarkably well. I stake lightly, preferring the garden to be composed of plants that are not reliant upon us to keep them upright. The wiry stems of the hemerocallis and dierama and the pliable Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ were almost made for wind and withstand even the rain-laden gales, but the plants that topple when in the full sail of summer growth need assistance. Taller than me, sanguisorba that would splay in a great cartwheel without support and echinops that would derail an area as wide as they are tall if they broke loose from their metal hoops. Staking takes valuable time in the rush to finish the garden work before growth starts in earnest in the spring, but our metal hoops work and are fast to install.