Every summer Lewis Cottage Garden, near Spreyton, opens to the public as a part of the National Garden Scheme (NGS) but this year they are taking a break. Gardener Richard Orton explains why and notes the benefits of contemplating rather than working in your garden. He also extols the joys of seed collecting and lists a few jobs that still need doing.
This year we’ve taken a break from opening each month for the NGS,simply to allow the garden to rest for a year and breathe and for us to take stock of how we’d like the garden to look in the years ahead.
We have however, welcomed a few garden groups this year and I must confess that more than once I have overheard visitors say “you know, when you sit in your own garden, you only see the jobs that need doing but when you sit in someone else’s there’s a wonderful sense of enforced idleness.” They were quite right and it got me thinking that we all spend far too much time “doing” and not enough time “contemplating” our gardens.
Plants that visiting friends remembered as small cuttings are now large shrubs and it was a joy to show them the large collection of hydrangeas we have and to let them take cuttings away with them, the start of another new garden just as we had done in 1992.
It really doesn’t matter what the size of your garden might be, a smart phone is all you need. As you walk around your garden make a visual record of plants that need moving or of areas that need attention so that in the winter months when everything has died back you can remember where the plants were located.
Sitting on the terrace I saw a completely new view I had not noticed before. Why? It was because I sat in a different chair than usual and saw a familiar view from a slightly different angle.
The plants and shrubs had grown to slightly overshadow a path providing a screen to the lawn beyond, which only a few years ago would have been visible from where I sat. It reminded me that gardens aren’t museums, they don’t stand still. The summer marches on relentlessly and the garden is running away with itself; armfuls of veg to be picked and hedges needing to be trimmed, roses to be deadheaded.
The month of August is one of my favourite times of the year because it is the main seed collecting season. Armed with my canvas seed collecting bag stuffed full of brown paper bags and snippers, I will spend hours wandering the garden, snipping off dried seed stems from anything that I feel is worth growing for the nursery. I am a great believer in sowing when the seed is ready, so the polytunnels will start filling with empty seed trays of drying stems, then with the freshly sifted seed.
Most will be varieties of perennial foxglove or hardy annuals such as ammimajus, agrostemma, marigold or gypsophilia, cornflowers, sweet peas and zinnia. These will be grown on in the polytunnels until the spring when they wil be potted up ready for the new season and the cycle begins all over again.
Gardening jobs for the coming month
- Mow meadows now to help scatter established wildflower seeds.
- Water evergreen shrubs such as camellias and rhododendrons thoroughly this month so next year’s buds develop well.
- Dead head annual bedding plants and perennials to encourage them to flower into the autumn.
- Lift and dry onions, shallots and garlic once the foliage has flopped over and yellowed. Store them in onion bags to prevent mould developing.
- Harvest French and runner beans little and often to prevent them from setting seed. Pick runner beans regularly to stop them becoming stringy.
- If you have a glut of raspberries, blackberries or loganberries, freeze them on trays for a couple of hours and then bag them for use over winter.
- Damp down your greenhouse on hot days to increase humidity and deter red spider mites.
More information on the garden at Lewis Cottage can be found here
