Summer is here, and our gardens are bursting with activity. We spend more time than ever enjoying our outdoors spaces now, so here are a few jobs that will make you feel like you've earned that sun lounger time.
Edible
It's prime time for harvesting and planting vegetables. Enjoy crops like tomatoes, cucumbers, and courgettes as they ripen. Regularly pick these to encourage further production. Plant late-season crops such as spinach, radishes, and lettuce to extend your harvest well into autumn. Once summer-fruiting raspberries are done, you can prune the spent canes right back to the ground.
Ornamentals
Deadheading spent flowers from plants such as roses, dahlias and sweet peas will help prolong flowering. Mulching around the base of plants after rainfall helps retain soil moisture and suppress weeds. Consider drying some flowers—at Clumber Park, this gives us floristry material well into winter.
Lawns & Hedges
Maintaining a lush, green lawn during the summer requires regular care. Mowing should be done frequently but avoid cutting the grass too short to prevent stress and browning. Where possible, watering deeply once or twice a week will encourage deep root growth, making the lawn more resilient to drought. Most hedges can be given a final trim towards the end of August and won’t grow much after that.
Watering
A common challenge now is irrigation. Following one of the driest springs on record, and varying restrictions around hose pipe use, it’s never been more pertinent to consider your watering strategy. Maximising rainwater collection by connecting a water butt to a downpipe, or using grey water from sinks and showers can all help solve this conundrum. Group together plants in containers and water in the cooler parts of the day where possible.
Remember to keep bird baths and ponds topped up so for thirsty wildlife and most importantly of all, enjoy!
All the best, Dene.
www.nationaltrust.org.uk/clumberpark
Images courtesy of Tammy Herd.
