Garden Centre

Saturday, August 4, 2007

Sunshine at last ...

June was grim, July the wettest ever, but finally August holds out some promise … or does it?

The holly is in berry, the rowans too, and some trees appear to be readying themselves for the change in colour associated with autumn? What’s going on? Wildlife expert Trevor Beer suggests the early arrival of the various fruits is due to the intense rain in July, which may have fooled the plants into thinking autumn has arrived early so they have begun to fruit for fear of missing the season.

Alternatively the early and warm spring may have pushed certain plants into an early autumn as their growing season is measured by weeks, not weather conditions.

Down in Devon, at the Royal Horticultural Society gardens, the ornamental acer trees have already started going through the autumnal colours usually associated with later in the year.

While weather experts insist that such localised and recent changes cannot be put down to global warming or climate change – because they don’t add up to enough of a trend yet to be measured - it is clear that weather extremes like these, and hurricanes, and flooding, and winters that aren’t cold enough to kill off garden pests, will all become a more regular occurrence.

This means the kind of container gardening shown in the picture may become more prevalent, as we learn to cope with the unexpected. Even so, this August you can expect to see the Dahlias come into their own – they are the princesses of late summer and along with other members of the daisy family such as the rudbeckias and heleniums they offer a riot of colour and form for otherwise rather tired looking borders. If you want something more permanent, the later blooming varieties of ceanothus give an azure bloom to the garden now, and hardy hibiscus are in full flower in shades of magenta and pink.

Labels: ceonothus, dahlia, garden flowers, garden news, garden pests, hibiscus, rudbeckia

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:04 AM 0 Comments

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