22 September 2026

I wasn’t expecting to be writing this in drought still. We’ve still had no rain to speak of, though the occasional light showers we’ve had – more mist than rain – have done a good job of cooling down scorched plants.

To us, the gardens look parched, though only a couple of specific plants have been wilting in between waterings. But we were heartened by a comment from someone sitting on the bench watching us last week; she said she ‘d started coming down to sit in the Memorial Gardens because they were the only place that still had a lot of green in them, . And when we looked round, she was right. All a question of perspective!

We’ve spent a lot of the last ten years or so trying to make the gardens more resilient, particularly in terms of needing less watering. We try to stop any moisture in the soil from evaporating too quickly, both by mulching a lot through the year with either leaf mould or compost, and by trying to grow plants close together and keep the ground covered, with as little bare soil as possible.

‘Mulching’ just means putting something on top of the soil. It could be slate chips, or gravel, or woodchip; or something organic that will be incorporated into the soil and improve the moisture-holding, as well as protecting it by covering it.

We mainly use the leaf mould we’ve made every autumn, as it doesn’t add too many nutrients; it sounds counterintuitive, but we don’t want plants to put on too much leafy growth, or they won’t stand up to tougher conditions if they have to. The leaf mould gradually gets taken down into the soil by worms.

We also use the compost we make from weeds and cut-up stems. We just use it round the shrubs, dahlias and one or two other plants, to give them a slow-release boost.

We’ve also started growing plants closer together, and leaving far more self-seeded ones between them too. That way, we can weed out seedlings we don’t want, to let the others grow on strongly, but during the hottest part of the year, the ground’s well covered, and we don’t have to water so often.

Unfortunately neither of these methods is effective enough to protect plants in the kind of heat we’ve had over the last few years. We’ve lost several plants that used to survive before summers got hotter; we’re working out what to use in their place. It’s actually a very difficult site – light, sandy soil on top of a pan of compacted clay, which means nutrients wash out of reach of plants’ roots, but drainage is poor and many plants die when they’re wet and cold through autumn and winter. A challenge!