The garden in August begins a shift towards the next season.  Eased gently in with the first asters and towering Echinops exaltatus, with its pale, silvery globes, alive with bees, that you have no choice to look up into and always see against sky. Skies in which the light is already changing. The greens in the trees being the darkest they ever will be, the meadows and verges the palest.

Almost everything from the first half of summer is at its tallest or toppling after a rain laden squall and it is now that we notice the steadfast plants that take us safely through into September. The first of many cyclamen, mulberries ripening and already on the ground and the prospect still in the Japanese wind anemone with first flower and promise built into their seasonality.