September is surely one of the most beautiful months. Evenings cooling, grass wet again with dew, but warmth still in the sun. The tiredness that sometimes hangs over August is now refreshed after rains. The meadows flushed with new green and germination happening everywhere. A rash of poppy seedlings seizing the moment to establish themselves before winter and, of course, the sea of dandelions. The very moment I thought about back in May when the airborne seed moved in silken clouds down the valley, but I’d all but forgotten whilst they lay dormant in the dry weeks of summer.

With the change we welcome a new wave of energy in the garden. The first of the asters, the sudden emergence of naked colchicum and smatterings of autumn flowering cyclamen, the harbingers of this shoulder season. Most lovely of all on this particular September day is the Clematis ‘Sundance’ which has been readying itself for autumn. I have it on the edge of the garden close to the milking barn veranda where, if ever we do sit and look, we are inclined to catch the warming, morning rays. The covered veranda is our breakfast place, so it is a moment in the garden which affords close scrutiny and where we need the detail to satisfy the time we take to pause there. In spring we have Paeonia mlokosewitschii, followed by navy blue camassias twinned with the blackest Iris chrysographes.

When we arrived here, the milking barn that sits just below the house was marooned in a patchwork of concrete slabs that the farmer before us had poured to hold the slopes around the building. We had plans for the barn to be renovated as my workspace and for the old yard to become a place for the barn. Somewhere to take in the view up the valley and for the planting here to capture the evening light. 

The trough that is now the anchor point in the yard was the catalyst. We hired the largest forklift to lift the trough from the waggon that parked in the layby at the top of the hill, but as we edged down the single-track lane, we quickly saw that maybe we had bitten off more than we could chew. Weighing in at about twenty tonnes all in, the concrete patchwork buckled like a pie crust as we inched the trough down the slope and into the old yard. We were a way off yet from doing the renovations to the buildings, so the trough sat marooned in the remains of the yard and, in the time that followed, the interlopers that found their way into the cracks and gave the yard grace, spawned the idea for the mood for the planting. Herb Robert and hogweed, Timothy grasses and willowherb. Plants that could survive on very little and, whilst we were waiting to make our next move, made the place their own. 

Another summer of tomato growing brings another summer of learning. Now three years in to growing tomatoes under cover I have learnt from my previous mistakes. Having started to feed the plants very late in the first year, I now have a firm grip on watering and feeding regimes. After overcrowding the polytunnel with too many plants last year and risking blight, I reduced the number of plants and increased the spacing, which has resulted in much better air flow and more light reaching the fruits. Perhaps feeling a little smug I was preparing myself for our biggest harvest yet. However, this year’s impediment to a bumper crop has been largely out of my control. 

When the first heatwave came in July we covered the polytunnel with two spare lengths of bird netting from the fruit cages to create enough light shade to keep the temperature down somewhat. Yet, on the hottest day, when it reached 37 degrees here, the temperature inside the polytunnel was 46, despite having both doors open and regularly hosing down the floor (which rapidly reduced the temperature by 4 or 5 degrees). About a week later it became apparent that the last fruits on the first trusses and nearly all of the second trusses had aborted due to stress. So I kept up the watering and feeding and trusted that there was still all of August for them to produce plenty more fruit. 

The Agapanthus inapertus, which are kept in pots for their late summer display, are slow. They take time to decide when they want to flower, making you wait until they are settled in, sometimes a year or more after planting, producing nothing but foliage in the meantime. They are sluggish when breaking dormancy, keeping you on edge as the spring burgeons around them whilst they wait for the warmth. Once they get away I start a weekly seaweed feed to encourage flower and impatiently part their strappy foliage to see if they are going to reward me, for it’s not until the longest day or so that they let you in on their plans. 

When the tapered sheaths – pointed like skyward arrows – begin to ascend, I move them to the front of the house from the holding ground by the cold frames before the stems are long enough to be damaged. Anticipation continues throughout July, as the flowering growth slowly draws itself out well into August and up to the teetering point between the seasons.

Wishing you a wonderful late summer holiday weekend

Flowers & photograph: Huw Morgan

If you didn’t know and had to take an educated guess at where zinnias originate from then it is quite likely that Mexico would come near the top of the list. With their kaleidoscopic colours and searing vibrancy they speak of a hot climate and it is no surprise to discover that Frida Kahlo grew them in her garden at Casa Azul, the home she shared with Diego Rivera in Mexico City, where they honoured indigenous culture and planted only native species. Visitors at the time would recall the blood red zinnias that decorated the dining table and, if you look at the many self-portraits and photographic portraits of Kahlo, alongside dahlias, tagetes and bougainvillea, zinnias also feature in some of the dramatic floral headpieces that were her trademark.   

Despite a love of colour, for many years I could not see the attraction in them. Their stiff habit, dry, papery petals and outlandish colours reminded me too strongly of the depressing vases of cloth flowers my grandmothers and great aunts had gathering dust on mantelpieces and windowsills when I was a child. In the past few years, though, I have begun to appreciate the shot of energy they bring at this time of the year, when many perennials in the garden are on the wane. Picked for the house, in combination their colours intensify and play off each other and, like a good firework display, provoke an instant rush of childlike joy.

The farmer who cuts our hay for us in exchange for the grazing is usually ready and waiting on or around July the 15^th. Of course, the date is weather dependent, but it is fixed for a good reason. There is still energy in the meadows as they have not yet run completely to seed and the hay is still nutritious. Importantly for us, the annual Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus minor), which we introduced to help curb the vigour of the grasses has had a chance to seed. The saying goes “When the rattle rattles, it is time to make hay”. And sure enough, when our feet rustle amongst the bladder shaped seedpods, we know the meadows have not much time left for standing.  

This year the meadows were cut a whole three weeks later than usual, because the bailer went up in smoke in the week of the last heatwave. We let out a gentle sigh of relief, because the eerie silence that descends after the hay is harvested is always disquieting. All that habitat swept up over two fast days. First the cut with the hay left to dry in the sun, then the windrowing later in the day to gather it into a giant’s corduroy for easy baling, The next day the dusty commotion of the bailer and, if he can, the farmer collects the same day so all is done and silent by the second evening. 

The Field Scabious are high summer flowers. Hovering, lilac-blue and dusk-luminous once the meadows turn tawny. They arrive as the heat comes into July and hold well into August, the month of wild carrot and twisting bindweed. A time of dark greens, pale fields and ripening as the energy shifts towards berry and seed. 

I step a number of cultivated scabious into the garden as the first round of summer perennials pass and begin to change the tone to maintain vitality and provide a succession of forage for pollinators in August. We are lucky enough here to have room to allow them to repeat and the original plantings of Scabiosa ochroleuca have migrated along the paths where they are happiest on the edge of things. I leave the seedlings where there is room, their filigree foliage being distinctive and easy to winkle out if they look like they might overwhelm their chosen company.  When happy, a seedling can make flower in the first year and go on to be in their prime in the second and third. Though they will live longer, the older a plant becomes, the more it is prone to splay and showing its middle, so I keep them on rotation, removing the eldest and editing the seedlings so that I look like I rule the roost and they don’t. 

The first winter here I extended the farmer’s vegetable garden and the only square of cultivated ground in the lee of the milking barn. The following summer, our first summer of new wonder, we began the great experiment to see what the land was made of. We planted a kitchen garden, as there is nothing like vegetables and annual flowers to tell you what does well within a growing season. With space on my hands for the first time and not the vicarious space of a client’s garden, I dissected the new plot into additional rectangles to begin a trial of plants for the garden, which was then in my mind’s eye but now, ten years later, overwrites these first cultivations. 

Whilst I was gathering my thoughts and with ground to spare, four areas were sown with Pictorial Meadow mixes so that I could test them for myself and witness their day to day evolution. I’d used them before to provide a show where we were staggering the development of a garden or for a fast and easy fix in an area where we needed an economical solution. But there is nothing like growing at close quarters and witnessing the evolution of a garden on a daily basis and under your own control. Developed originally by Nigel Dunnett who this year sowed the Superbloom at the Tower of London, the panels were each different in mood and their raipid development taught me a lot in that first summer of discovery. The red orach toppling in one mix showed us the heartiness of the soil and the need to keep it lean in our blustery exposed position. The Shirley poppies, that still come up in the garden today are the offspring of these early years of pioneering and live on as a memory. 

Although it’s just two weeks since my last recipe, Dan has been away for most of this week and so it falls to me to provide for you all again. And, as the harvest season begins in earnest, the kitchen garden has been much on my mind.

Just before Dan left we dug out the last of the broad beans and peas, laden with full pods we have not had time to pick in the last few weeks. It was a hot evening and we threw the plants into barrows and wheeled them to the shade of the covered area next to the house, where we sat down with cold drinks and removed the pods.