Tips and Advice

There are two kinds of people: those that think of February as the lowest point of the year and those that love it and I am firmly in the latter camp. 

February is the month when the garden really starts to come alive and grow even if the weather can be severe and the days are still short. In February something is definitely happening. There is a thrill in the air.

This garden and all who sail in her is floating into 2024 - almost literally. It has barely stopped raining for the past three months and as I write this the fields as far as the eye can see are under water as is sections of the garden .This is rather beautiful in a calm rather surreal way, especially in the brief gaps between downpours when the waters are still and become a vast lake appearing overnight. But mostly all this rain just means mud, slippery paths and the frustration of not being able to get on with much work in the garden without making a terrible mess.

But then Christmas comes and we ransack the garden for greenery, deck the halls, put up a tree, make wreaths and Boxing day feels like a fresh start. In fact I always sow some seeds on Boxing day - onions, chillies, some tomatoes - as much as a symbolic act as serious horticulture. 

Midwinter is past. the days are getting longer. Soon there will be snow drops and aconites, crocus and hellebores.

I am writing this on the last day of October and the garden outside is barely autumnal. Most of the leaves are still green and clinging to the trees and hedges and although it has been wet all month, October has been mild. 

But experience shows that, even with climate change altering the seasons, there is no room for complacency.  The clocks have gone back and winter is coming and preparation for any kind of extreme weather is sound practice.

October this year is entering through the back door. There is barely a hint of autumn other than the shortening days and cooler nights. The garden remains a strange matt green without a hint of the delicacy and fading that usually characterises the end of September. 

But the only rule is that there are no rules. The longer I garden the less assumptions I make. And none of this harms the garden in any way.

For us, here on the very west of England, September has traditionally been one of the drier months but also one of the gentlest and most beautiful. This is just as well because August '23 was as cold, wet and grey as July had been.  All in all it has been a miserable summer. 

Whereas this gardener wore unseasonably heavy clothing and wellingtons in the July mud, the garden loved the rain and tolerated the cold so looks much fresher this August than a year ago. Often August can feel as though summer is growing weary and jaded but not this year. However the one thing that is always constant in the August garden is that the days are growing noticeably shorter and this affects growth, especially of young plants.

Regardless of the weather, July is the summation of summer, the month when the days are still long, the growth as full as it ever might be and none of the slight weariness that can shadow August. It is the month of school holidays, and the garden flows and swells with both floral and edible harvests.

As the clock slips past midnight on May 31st the garden and I have arrived where we most need to be. There is much change and development to come and the beginning of June is a very different place to the dog days of late July and August but nevertheless there sense of arrival at summer is undeniable yet has the freshness and inner glow of spring. 

April was cold and wet here at Longmeadow and pretty miserable for gardeners right across the UK. However, the garden seems not have minded too much and it arrives at May luminously green and full of flowers with more appearing every day.

March was blessedly soggy. Not so good for gardeners but after the exceptional dryness of last year, great for gardens. Moisture in the soil now, as plants start to grow in earnest, means that the garden is greening daily and the spring flowers - especially the blossom and bulbs - are quickly following in this green wake.

After a very dry February March begins cold and squally and looks set to be chilly for most of the month. But any gardener learns very quickly to expect the unexpected in March. 

We go into February with the garden still grey and almost without visible life, a full ten days or so behind where it might be in terms of snowdrops, hazel catkins, first irises, aconites, crocus and the shoots of daffodils breaking through the turf.  

2023 has opened wet and mild for us here in this garden on the borders of England and Wales although we had a snap of really cold weather just before Christmas with the temperature dropping to minus 13 (8F) for a few days.

December 2022 at Longmeadow has begun cold and foggy, the weather raw and the cold seeping into one's bones. But it is dry, and that is something to be thankful for at this time year. The irony, of course, is that 2022 has been one of the driest years ever and certainly the driest since we came to this garden 30 years ago. Autumn was also mild to the point of oddness. It was unsettling, out of kilter with the rhythm of the seasons.

This autumn has again been exceptionally mild with the weather more akin to April or even May. This, of course, is part of the trend caused by climate change and we should expect and be used to it but it is shocking, disturbing and frightening in equal measure.

October begins flecked with summer but leaves with winter trailing hard on its heels. In the intervening weeks October light can be magical - although it is often a wet month here on the borders with Wales.

However, this year, after our exceptionally dry spring and summer, rain would be a blessing.

August remained dry at Longmeadow - and throughout much of the UK, although the extreme heat of July passed. In fact the weather was balmy and mild - but we longed for rain. We need an exceptionally wet autumn and/or winter to restore the water levels both in our garden soil and the reservoirs.