Summer 2024

I am rarely content with our garden, there is always something that needs doing, or changing, or an area that just doesn’t look right. I guess this is fairly standard for gardeners as a garden is never static. But right now I am finding that I am very content with the garden. There are so many spaces that give me pleasure, views that catch my eye and make me pause, just to appreciate the plants busy doing their thing. 

There have been many challenges as usual this year, the slugs were out in force and devoured my entire squash patch. But the rain that encouraged the slugs have also encouraged my cucumbers, and for the first time ever I am harvesting large cucumbers that do not taste bitter. It is a joy to eat a colourful salad at lunch time that comes entirely from the garden. The salads are improved by the addition of grated carrots which have also been a happy outcome from a moment of adversity. Last year our little greenhouse was destroyed in a hailstorm, and rather than replace every pane of glass, we decided to remove the upper glass structure and turn the concrete base into a carrot bed. The base is in effect a 1m high raised bed, and we have filled it in the manner of hugelkultur (ie. big sticks at the base, then small sticks, then green material, then compost). I sowed it with carrots and parsnips (several times as the tiny seedlings were repeatedly eaten by slugs, snails, birds, or some other pesky predator), and the mature carrots have been the largest I have ever grown. The other raised carrot bed is full of a mixture of earth and sand (to improve drainage) and those carrots are significantly smaller. I am now a very big fan of growing my carrots in a bed of loose compost! 

But it is not just the potager that is giving me so much pleasure at the moment. My attempts to increase the colour in the front garden are also reaping results. The pots of roses and geraniums are in full flower and the zinnia’s against the house are like a classic child’s drawing, a line of single flowers, each one a different colour! But the true star of the early summer were the sweet peas that decided to grow in a space where everything usually dies. It has taken them 4 years to germinate, but they were definitely worth the wait. The vibrant pink colour shone brightly with the promise of summer, and somewhat surprisingly, the colour was an exact match for the roses growing in a symmetrical position on the other side of the wall. I am beginning to wonder if the colour of both the roses and the sweet peas is determined by something in the soil in that location. But I am not going to think too hard about it, I am just going to enjoy the colour and the compositions that the garden chooses to give me this year.