“Summer treads
On heels of spring.”
Horace Odes Book VII
The heavy spring rains have made for an extraordinary summer garden here in the valley. I am surprised every time I go outside to see the coneflowers, lilies, yarrow and other perennials that are at least a foot taller than usual. The dark red self seeded Shirley poppies in the vegetable garden are putting on a good show this year. Doesn’t look at all like I thinned them severely in the spring. New colours of California poppies have appeared. I have had plain orange singles for years. The new ones are double orange and various shades of yellow and yellow tinged with red. No idea what flower gods I have to thank for the beautiful new ones. I learned a long time ago not to question the many mystery plants which have appeared over the years.
I have done more watering this year than I have had to do in many years. It is so dry that it is obvious that vegetables planted a few months back would not survive without a lot of help. I use a mulch of shredded maple leaves (thanks John on King St for all those leaves) and try to water every two or three days.
Hot peppers are thriving in the tropical heat. Some of these have attractive purple leaves and flowers and wouldn’t look out of place in a flower border. I’m happy to see a good crop of peppers since I had a total crop failure last year. This year saw my best ever crop of snow peas. They were done by mid-July and when I took out the vines, I left some seedlings of nicotine (N. alata) to fill in the space. In just over a week the once shaded seedlings grew big enough to flower. They’re a mixture of pink and purple and a nice addition to the summer garden.
The separation of vegetables and flowers is totally arbitrary and the Victorians are to blame for this. In the big houses where wealthy people lived it was apparently offensive for his lordship to glance upon a potato growing.
So flowers and shrubs were planted close to the house and vegetables were confined to a separate often walled kitchen garden. Unfortunately the big houses were influential in setting fashion trends some of which are still with us today.
The Victorians were mad for carpet bedding where lots of hothouse raised annuals were planted out every spring. We still do this to an extent. And we really don’t need to. It doesn’t seem sustainable to buy so many new plants every year when so many annuals self-seed so prolifically. It’s not rocket science to learn what the various seedlings look like when they first appear in the spring.
Portulaca, poppies, snapdragons, nicotines and love-in-a-mist are just a few of the annuals that come up reliably here year after year.
Of course we know now that a monoculture isn’t a healthy environment for plants. So the small cottage gardens where the hollyhocks grew beside the cabbages almost certainly produced healthier and more resilient plants. Cottage gardeners saved their own seeds of both vegetables and flowers. We are fortunate to have the legacy of this type of smaller scale mixed gardens. It is a more sustainable model than what went on at the bigger houses.
I would recommend two books by Geoff Hamilton for anyone interested in cottage gardens and attractive sustainable kitchen gardens. These are Geoff Hamilton’s Cottage Gardens and The Ornamental Kitchen Garden. I have a lot of time for Geoff Hamilton and not just because he chews up the Victorians. He is sensible with a good eye and he cuts through a lot of sentimental nonsense that has been written on the subject of cottage gardens. I found both these books in second hand stores and I refer to them often.
I’m enjoying the August garden in spite of all the watering. But it would be very much appreciated if the weather gods favoured us with a few serious rain days.
Happy midsummer.
By Jill Williams
