August Garden Notes

From my notebook on nature and the garden - August 2024

Bottom row (left to right) - Cosmos apricot lemonade, cosmos apricotta, scabious fata morgana, dahlia totally tangerine, phlox cherry caramel, dahlia Linda’s Baby, scabious fata morgana. Top row (left to right) - Dahlia Cornel Bronze, Sunflower Ms Mars, Sunflower Pro cut plum, a rogue of dahlia labyrinth

You have to make your peace with August, with its tumble and floppiness, with the crisp edges and faded heads, with the things going to seed amid the things just coming into flower. It is not for the faint hearted, not a month for tidy people, at least not in my garden.

August is always our busiest month in the chambres d’hôtes, more people coming and going, shorter stays, bigger groups. There’s less time to be in the garden than any other month of year, and the weeds know it. I dead head as much as I can as I pick the flowers for the house twice a week, but there is always a bed or two going to seed.

I finally found time to tackle to ugly, papery foxgloves spires, which showered me with their tiny golden brown seeds as I cut them down and weeded around their bases. But the nigella bed is still a tangle of spiky brown stars on stalks, wnich rattle in the wind, slowly bursting and showering the ground with miniature black pebbles. I need a cool, dry day with 20 spare minutes in it to cut them back and fill an envelope with seeds.