5 July 2024

The gardens have really benefited from all the rain over the last few months, and everything’s growing really strongly. When we cut back spent flowers and stems a week or two ago, we filled two Dalek compost bins, and the gardens still looked lush afterwards!

As we described last year, we’ve slightly changed the types of plants we use here, to try and cope with the very varied weather we’ve had over the last few years. We can’t really rely on spring getting warmer and drier, summer being warm and sunny with occasional storms – this time three years ago we were having a heatwave, this year the plants have been lucky if they see the sun at all for days, and night-time temperatures have fallen to single figures a couple of times lately, which checks plant growth and flowering. So everything we use has to cope with all of that!

This means that the gardens are looking even more informal than ever, but there’s still lots of colour from flowers and leaves. We’re just beginning to see dahlias flowering – they’ve been mainstays of the gardens for the last few years, carrying on from July right up to the first frost, which is usually around Remembrance Day in November. We had always intended to grow more of them, but haven’t added any this year while we decide if it’s really worth all the effort when a couple of people steal many of the flowers. The same couple have been seen a few times doing it, so we know it’s not just the local wildlife! But we have limited volunteer time and a very limited budget, and it doesn’t seem worth buying new things for everyone’s enjoyment, when they’re just going to be stolen. So we’re trying to maintain the level of colour and flowering through the gardens, but using plants that hopefully will be less attractive to thieves, like salvias and penstemons, and – if the weather ever turns warm enough to germinate them – annuals like California poppies, which pollinators love.

Meanwhile, the children from Mentmore Road Under-Fives came round this morning to pick the peas they’ve been growing for the last few months. Always an exciting morning!