Late July

"I don't really enjoy beds carved out of a lawn and

looking thoroughly self-conscious. Open jam tarts

my mother used to call them."

- Christopher Lloyd

An enterprising gardener has sown a meadow in front of her
bungalow on a rather unprepossessing new estate

Of course, one way of avoiding the 'jam tart' effect is to plant your very own meadow ...

Alas not all of us have enough space in our gardens, but it's becoming popular around some of our neighbouring villages where there's an unused field or a vacant lot which needs prettifying - and cosmos seems to be the 'go-to' plant.

Wild marjoram (Origanum vulgare)
growing with common ragwort

Elsewhere nature has done the job for us, spreading carpets of mauve and yellow across fallow hillsides and clifftops.

This seems to have been a particularly good season for wild marjoram which normally comes into flower in August. Decorative though it is, I can't say we have much use for this mild type of oregano as a culinary herb, though maybe it has more flavour when dried.

So many plants and crops are early this year due to the scorching weather we had in June, followed by lots of rain and further lengthy bouts of sunshine.

Sunflower Season!

Blue fescue - grown as a weed
suppressant perhaps?

We noticed sunflowers were already blooming in June and many are inevitably going over now.

In a normal year, July is the best month for photographing them - the green lines of our neighbours' vineyards are broken up with streaks of vivid yellow.

Above us on the hill here I notice that the field margins appear to have been planted with blue fescue grass which, from a distance, looks exactly like the foliage on my garden pinks.

This grass seems to do well on chalky soil and pops up in various fields locally, but I've never seen it growing so uniformly as edging which makes me think it must have been sown deliberately.

View over our valley to the village of Barzan

For me, the word Gladiolus instantly conjures up an image of our suburban garden in the 1960's, when my brother delighted us by planting lots of gladioli corms supplied by a local nurseryman.

Gladiolus papilio 'Ruby' next to
a dark leaved Physocarpus

He grew them in the veg plot, in neat rows for cutting, where mother could do her Constance Spry bit and choose from subtle shades of yellow and salmon pink, or the less than subtle tones of vivid orange and scarlet.  (I think all colours were in vogue until Dame Edna made a mockery of them!)

I daresay many are back in fashion now but we find it hard to look beyond the species types like Gladiolus papilio 'Ruby' which began flowering a month ago and is still providing welcome splashes of deep magenta amongst surrounding greenery. 

Looking at Beth Chatto's website just now, I see the original Gladiolus papilio has drooping bell-shaped flowers similar in its colourway to Helleborus niger. I think it might be another must-have for the late summer border, growing up to a meter tall with narrow grey-green leaves.

Echinacea

Echinacea purpurea

There's certainly no shortage of pale pink in the garden right now and I'm glad that echinacea flowers over a long period, especially in the semi-shade under an ash tree.

As with many such 'coneflowers' from the prairies of North America, these blooms develop in shape and hue as they mature, creating interesting subjects for photography as well as for indoor display.

'Green Jewel' is a more compact variety of Echinacea purpurea and was developed by plantsman Piet Oudolf in The Netherlands.

It stands out in shadier locations and is definitely one of our favourite plants when it comes to stems for cutting.

Nicotiana alata 'Lime Green' looking fabulous with
orange Cosmos sulphurea and a mauve geranium

New Plantings

As usual this spring I sowed a number of different seeds to produce some quick growing annuals, like lobelia and cosmos, as well as a few half-hardy annuals which can produce flowers within about three months.

Antirrhinum majus
'Appleblossom'

Having had great success with the Chiltern Seeds antirrhinum 'Black Prince' last year, I checked their latest catalogue for another variety to add contrast to our summer bedding.

Antirrhinum majus 'Appleblossom' is destined to grow even taller than its cousin 'Black Prince', which earlier this year produced substantial bushes about 50cm tall and has now been cut down.

I've dotted several of the new plants in different areas to see what works best and so far they're all fairly small but still managing to produce robust flowers with pale-pink petals and yellow throats.

Volutaria muricata 'Desert Star' with the
orange petals of Cosmos

Morocco Knapweed is not a plant I've come across before and, looking at it, you might assume that it's part of the Centaurea family.

In fact it's now designated as Volutaria muricata and this variety was in a packet of seeds which came with a recent gardening magazine.

It's easy to grow, with thankfully less foliage than most centaureas, and has reached a height of about 50cm, blooming rather sporadically but still quite effective against contrasting flowers like Cosmos sulphurea.

As it's from Morocco, I'm hoping it will be drought-tolerant!

Aster pyrenaeus 'Lutetia'

Aster 'Lutetia'

Another starry plant which is lighting up a shady corner is this pretty Aster which we found at Beth Chatto's nursery last autumn.

I associate Michelmas daisies with late summer but I'm glad to see this one already looking so at home in its new situation and hope the dainty little flowers will keep on coming.

To quote Beth's website, this variety will make a bushy mound "smothered to the ground with pale lilac-blue flowers" - and what's more, it doesn't suffer from mildew!

Cerambyx cerdo - impressive,
but rather a saddo really

Capricorn

A somewhat scary-looking longhorn beetle called the Great Capricorn Beetle appeared on the wall of our garden shed the other day and was disinclined to move, even when prodded.

We looked him up online and discovered that he's another of those endangered species sometimes mistaken for a pest. 

They usually live in the dead-wood of oak trees (which might be why he appeared next to our log store) and emerge during summer to mate, surviving for just a few weeks and mainly active at twilight. Not quite such a scary beast after all ...

Back garden at the end of July, with crocosmia starting to peak

Changeable weather

Talmont-sur-Gironde under a stormy sky

July

"We all leave traces of ourselves behind
and they remain,
like a strand of wool on a thorn."

- Monty Don

A few torrential downpours later, the grass is green once more

It's certainly proving to be a summer of extreme weather: the earlier heatwave ended in violent storms but all that extra water soon revived our plants and I found myself happily digging holes to plant out the rest of this year's seedlings - not something I'd normally recommend in July!

An attractive corner for a snooze

Hydrangeas thrive in damp places and the one in these pictures is now in its third year, rewarding us with a host of exquisite blooms which start out pure white and gradually turn pink with age.

It's the first of three types of Hydrangea paniculata, planted in the shadow of a high wall, which comes into flower in July - living up to its name 'Early Sensation'.

All of these tend to suffer from yellow leaves as they're putting up with heavy chalk soil, so we need to dose them with a solution of chelated iron (like Sequestrine) as soon as the first leaves appear. This normally restores their greenery in a few days, although a follow-up dose is sometimes required later on.

Our gravelled courtyard was awash with water each time it rained but fortunately the underlying chalk soon soaked it up like a sponge, helping to keep shrubs and trees - like the young olive here -  well hydrated during the many hot days to come.

Pots, though, still have to be watered regularly and it's important to do this with a watering can rather than a hose: not only is this gentler on plants but it allows you to gauge exactly how much you're giving each pot. Sprinkling with a hose can have a surprisingly superficial effect - just stick your finger in the soil afterwards to see how far that dampness has actually penetrated!

Lavenders and Verbena bonariensis
growing out of chalk and gravel

Every year we say we're going to cut down on the number of pots we have to keep watering - and every year we still end up with numerous containers, although some of our woody herbs are now planted directly into the chalk.

Shaping Lavender

Christina loves her lavenders, particularly when it comes to cutting them back after flowering ...

This is a job she relishes (using battery-fired shears or clippers these days) as the warm climate allows for them to be hard pruned to a nice tight sphere and there's little fear of them not being able to re-sprout from old wood.

If we leave their flower heads too long, they will easily seed themselves in the surrounding gravel.

Rosemary officinalis -
nearly as good as yew!

And Rosemary

This little column of rosemary has been grown from a cutting we made a couple of years ago.

It was taken from a sturdy bush we happened to walk past one day, notable for its dense habit and resinous leaves - great if you want to distil essential oil but it can make your hands very sticky.

Christina trims it to shape once or twice a year and it has now reached a full meter in height.

Lavender flowering freely along the driveway, with
remaining heads of Romneya coulteri on the right

Insects of all shapes and hues come to visit in July; the hotter it gets, the more varied and exotic they tend to be.

Beautiful Demoiselle (Calopteryx virgo)

The so-called 'beautiful demoiselle' is decidedly the most eye-catching of the damselflies that we find around here.

This vivid metallic blue-green denotes the male of the species, with the female being a less notable dark brown - yes, it was ever thus!

Whilst they haven't actually come into our garden, we do spot them along nearby water courses.

Scarce Swallowtail (Iphiclides podalirius)

Rather confusingly, the butterfly known as the Scarce Swallowtail is actually quite widespread in central and southern Europe.

Its main foodplants are blackthorn and cherry, both of which grow wild in these parts, and it's attracted to the flowers of Verbena bonariensis, buddleia and hydrangea in our garden (as seen here).

The other Swallowtail (Papilio machaon) is darker, with a short tail, and much less common. But both species are undeniably handsome, adding a welcome bit of decoration to our flowers.

Echinacea purpurea - good for bees, hoverflies
and elegant white spiders (Misumena vatia)

Nerine oleander - its flowers can be
picked but all parts are poisonous!

Talking of things exotic, our oleanders have been blooming profusely for the past month, none more so than this pink one which was a cheap supermarket purchase last year.

Luckily we had a mild winter and all three oleanders came through unscathed even though we didn't bother to protect them.  (Why go to the trouble of wrapping them up when fresh plants are relatively inexpensive?)

We did feed them with a bit of home-made seaweed juice earlier in the season, but this plant has done particularly well and I think it's probably a new, improved strain.

Despite the fact that it doesn't attract much insect-life, it does serve to remind us of happy holidays in Greece.

Nigella hispanica (from Chiltern Seeds)
Love-in-the-mist with an interesting twist

Colour Combinations

I've said before that too many blue flowers together can be tedious. Scattering touches of pink or white (echinacea, cosmos, achillea) can help to break them up in a soft, muted way.  Splashes of scarlet (geum) or orange (calendula) are even more striking and make blues and purples appear more intense.

Gentian blue Salvia patens with Calendula officinalis 'Indian Prince'
- both available from Chiltern Seeds

Salvia coccinea
the bi-coloured Texas Sage

Salvias have become an indispensible part of our summer borders as they provide fabulous blooms in a range of bright tones.

Many of the more colourful ones come from Mexico and are not always fully hardy in a severe winter, but you can always treat them as bedding plants and grow them afresh from seed in the spring.

This Salvia coccinea, for instance, was sown in March from seed gathered late last summer when we spotted it growing in a local park.

I was pleased that the pink and white flowers came true from seed (not always the case) and believe it's a variety called 'Coral Nymph', which can be invasive in certain climates. Here it has established very quickly so I'll keep an eye out!

Summer Reading

Being somewhat starved of English language books in our corner of France, I was pleased to come across a paperback by Monty Don at a recent brocante. 

It's called "The Road to Le Tholonet - A French Garden Journey" and I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in France and/or it's invaluable contribution to the history of horticulture.

I tended to think of Monty as a TV presenter first and gardener second, but this well-researched and entertaining assembly of meditations on gardens both vast and small, formal or avant-garde, has definitely made me think again!

In exploring the aesthetics and practicalities of gardening through the ages, he reveals as much about himself as he does of the French national character.

A cheerful Charentais courtyard garden