In the month of September, as a soft start to my autumn sabbatical, I took a fortnight in Europe to visit new places, old friends and nursery people. I last visited Olivier Filippi and his Jardin Sec near Montpellier in 2019, when researching the planting for the restoration of Delos at Sissinghurst. I’d gone to see his collection of plants for a Mediterranean climate, many of which were originally wild collected and to gain from Olivier’s intimate knowledge about where they grew and what with. In just two days I’d been enlightened enough by such nuanced knowledge to feel confident about the plants we were going to use in Delos, but our conversations also fuelled an internal and ongoing dialogue about the need to understand how we might respond to our changing climate.

I had vowed to get back to the nursery sooner, but in just the short time since my last visit, the changes we had discussed five years ago already feel firmly upon us. The visit this autumn was sobering, for the climate shift that has already gripped this area of Southern France with record-breaking temperatures hitting 45°C in June 2021. The extreme summer heat has continued, cementing the encroaching drought that stretches down into Morocco. Drought that has persisted, with forest fires following the heat and low rainfall preventing the successful germination of endemic species, which are adapted to fire, but need winter rains to grow into the open ground the fire leaves in its wake.