gardening

Ladybirds In My Borders, Bees In My Bergamot

I’m back in the garden today. The old Africa album is taking a break. Although actually, thinking about days long past in Kenya has been a happy diversion from fidgeting about the lack of rain. Yet another month now with hardly enough to fill a watering can. But at least the days are much cooler and today quite overcast. In the meantime, the weather forecasting bods keep teasing and teasing, saying there will be rain two days hence, and then when we get there, ne’er a drop. Even my computer’s been joining in the game – a little message popping up saying ‘rainy days’ ahead. I now understand that ‘ahead’ is the operative word. And, of course, this being England, we can be fairly sure that one day we will receive a proper soaking.

Anyway, it’s not all bad news on the gardening front, so long as I keep up the regular watering. In fact the bergamot has scarcely needed any attention. For weeks now it has been a riot of bright purple heads. The leaves smell wonderful too, crushed between soily fingers. And as for the ~~white tailed bumbles~~ which, on closer inspection, are probably garden bumbles – talk about bee-lines. These days whole tribes of them are foraging among the curiously structured flowers.

I’m also very pleased to see a number of ladybirds in the garden, most numerously in the perennial cornflower (Centaurea). I’m puzzled as to why they are there, since I can’t see any aphid infestation, only ants. Unless they both ladybirds and ants preying on something too small for me to see.

Also spotted in the Centaurea are Common Carder bees, seen here with an incoming hoverfly:

And in the neighbouring Sunspot sunflower a Red-tailed bumble bee:

However, I am not so pleased this morning, to discover flea beetles on my Kabuki broccoli seedlings, planted out only two days ago. These tiny brassica-infesting bugs create a ‘scatter-shot’ appearance to all the leaves. Time to round up a few ladybirds and put them to work then. I’ve just read that they like flea beetles…

#SimplyRed Day 27

Six On Saturday ~ Still Waiting For Rain

The evening garden

This gardener is beginning to panic. After weeks of rainlessness, we’re now having a spike in temperatures – the peak today at 29 or 30 degrees, depending which weather forecast you consult. Thereafter, hopefully, we should feel a decline of several degrees, with finally a promise of rain next week.

But then we’ve had these promises several times over the last three months, with only one good downpour that yielded 8 watering cans’ worth from the shed water butt. And that was ages ago.

1. Hand watering is all very well, but it really only keeps plants ticking over. Or in the case of my onions and first sown carrots doesn’t. I pulled them up yesterday. They had simply stopped growing.

2. Also my single seed potato in a bucket had had enough by yesterday. This was one I couldn’t fit into my planting row, so I thought I’d trial it in a container. Stopping it from drying out was of course an issue. And the bucket itself was making it very hot. All the same, when I emptied it, I was quite impressed with this little haul.

The Rooster spuds in the ground are still holding their own for now, so I’m hoping for a reasonable harvest. We’ve eaten most of the Belle de Fontenay, and I’ve popped in a few peas where she’s left some space.

3. In the bean corner things are looking fairly hopeful. Beans respond well to mulching, and anyway make some of their own shade. I’d also prepared a compost filled trench for the runners in the winter. The dwarf borlotti beans, planted out in front, are also sheltering the runners’ roots. They don’t seem to mind being hot and are already forming pods. A slight error in labelling has resulted in some of the dwarf borlotti in the row requiring sticks, which is annoying. I have the taller variety growing up some trellis against next door’s garage – i.e. in the once horridly hypericum infested wall-bed on our boundary.

This year I have a real mix of runner bean varieties. For some reason I had problems getting any of my seeds to germinate well, new and not so new packets alike. I ended up re-sowing, and putting in a few Scarlet Emperor seedlings bought from the butcher’s to be going on with. My small row thus also has some white Moonlight, red Lady Di and one Painted Lady which has very pretty white and red flowers although they’re looking pink at the moment.

4. In the nonedible quarters, Penelope rose is still blooming hard, although the other roses have given up flowering now. I love her. She is like a wild rose, but with added flounces. And she smells delicious.

5. Also my favourite Morning Glories have begun to live up to their name and are putting on an early-day show. I’ve planted them out everywhere where there’s something to climb up, amongst the beans and sunflowers, up the trellis disguising the oil tank. Hopefully, if it does rain next week, they will really get going, and hopefully, too, keep flowering until the first frost as they did last year.

6. And another success has been the sweet peas. Although the ones in the front garden are now beginning to fry round the edges, this despite the watering and mulching. Also, given my non-orderly manner of cultivation – randomly up an obelisk and a trellis, they have grown rather short stems. My dear Pa would have been aghast. He used to grow his in regimented tall-cane rows, with set watering intervals to ensure evenly spaced blooms along each dead straight stem. Then he would lovingly count them, five and six big flower heads, usually. And then he would snip a bunch of the best and take them off to his latest lady friend. Mother rarely got a look in when it came to sweet peas.

I’ve tried taking a photo of ours outside, but they don’t look their best. So here’s one of the several small vases we have about the house. Wall-to-wall sweet pea scent, a soothing antidote to moments of over-heatedness.

Six On Saturday Please visit our host Jim. Lots of interesting plants in his garden today.

My Garden Supervisor: Robin Not So Red

Perhaps it’s the time of year, the courtship fine feathers and family raising done, but this robin’s breast looks to me more orange than red. I think it may be moulting time too. Some days when it pops into the garden, it looks as if it’s got out of its nest on the wrong side – feathers every which way. But then sloppy personal grooming doesn’t stop it from giving me hard looks, scrutinizing every gardening move in case worms and grubs are in the offing.

These days it is not so insistent and no longer perches on the nearest pot and cheeps until I make some attempt to provide. Not so many mouths to feed. So now, when it sees I’m only dead-heading or watering, it soon vanishes. Clearly it has other calls to make about the town.

#SimplyRed Day 2 Today on July Squares, Becky pays tribute to Cee whose inspiring photo challenges brought so many of us together. She is very much missed.

A Surprising Red Arrival

This opium poppy sprouted up suddenly between the blackcurrant bush and the compost bin, and this week it began to flower, just in time for Becky’s month of squares. Red is the theme, and square the format for the header photo.

The bees have fun with all the frills, burrowing in and out to gather pollen. I notice, too, there are more poppy plants coming on outside Graham’s shed so we’re in for a show from these showy volunteers.

When the buds first break, they are almost black, giving a glimpse of the dark underskirts first. Later, when the flower opens, they are only visible if you stand on your head.

#SimplyRed Day One – Join Becky for her month of squares: painting July red, but in a good way.

The Changing Seasons: June 2025

My last post perhaps gave the impression that there’s little room for flowers in our small garden; that all my attention has been on growing stuff to eat. But not so. June has been wonderfully floriferous, especially in the border atop the terrace wall. And beneath it, while the geraniums, centaurea, foxgloves, valerian and St. Cecilia rose came to full bloom, Graham sat on a chair, suitably hatted, and methodically chipped off the failed and peeling plaster. Our builder, Alan, says he’ll come and re-do it in autumn. And while he’s here sort out the old back garden steps. The house improvements continue.

St. Cecilia rose, Ann Thomson geranium, Sherbet Fizz pot marigold

Looking from the top of the garden towards the kitchen door, the border runs between the far end of shed and the right hand path. It also includes two miniature apple trees planted back in the autumn. The rose, St. Cecilia, was languishing there when we moved in nearly two years ago, but she’s had a good feed and a hard prune, and this June has been flowering wonderfully. She may be a tad wishy-washy colour-wise, but she has an exquisitely delicate scent.

Self-sown foxgloves among the geraniums at the path end of the border

The garden peripheries have also bloomed over the last couple of weeks, surprising given our near total lack of rain for many weeks. In the northerly corner the medicinal herb, St. John’s Wort is now soaring into the apple tree. I grew it from seed donated by a supporter of the Bishop’s Castle Seed Bank. The seed packets sit in a tray at the Town Hall and are free, although donations are welcomed.

Also blooming for the first time is this dreamy perennial foxglove. It has a tendency to flop somewhat in warmer temperatures, and has been struggling in the dry soil under the big apple tree. Mulching with hot-bin compost helped. And some hand watering of course.

And another cool looking plant that’s just started to flower. A white mallow. She’s been in several spots around the garden, but is now in the rear westerly corner, behind the Rooster potatoes and in front of a very nice miniature crab apple tree. The moves seem to have left her unscathed:

At the front of the house we have two biggish square beds, created after removing ugly paving (recycled into shed base and new back garden steps), but they are very much a work in progress. In the southerly one, I have some currently very small shrubs growing on, a couple of escallonias and a cistus, and in the meantime there’s a mix of herbaceous perennials and annuals, cosmos and zinnias, filling the spaces.

I was missing my Evereste crab apple tree, and managed to find a miniature one. It’s planted in a small circular raised bed of corten steel which I’m expecting to rust. Around it are some assorted small plants, including a white rock rose and Santolini rosmarinifolia, which are evergreen, Salvia Salavatore, and a trailing plant, Oregano Kent Beauty (centre front). This last was a wonderful plant discovery courtesy of Jude at Cornwall in Colours. I’d never seen it before I saw it on her blog. It really seems to like our garden, so thank you, Jude.

In the background right, not yet flowering, are three alcalthaea – a cross between mallow and hollyhocks. They are apparently short-lived perennials, but we’ll see. Last year they grew very tall and had to be curtailed, but their peachy pale flowers were very pretty.

Plants apart, the main activity in June was having our drive dug up by Justin, Bishop’s Castle’s professional excavator sans pareil. He mostly had to use a pick, this because the exact location of our water main pipe was uncertain. And this was happening because we wanted our rusted hundred year old, cast iron water pipe replaced with a plastic one. To say this was one heavy duty task is an understatement. Order is restored, but the drive now needs to be resurfaced.

Out beyond the garden gate:

A week last Sunday in Bishop’s Castle we had midsummer celebrations in the form of a gathering of Morris dancing troupes, local and further flung. They started on Sunday morning with rousing performances and much drumming at the next door care home, after which they streamed up the road past the house to continue performing at the top of the town. Later when we tried to drive out of the town by our usual route, we found the road ahead full of dancers and musicians, and were advised that they might be there for some time and so would we mind making a detour. We didn’t. It was all good fun and surely makes a change from having multiple local roads closed for cable laying.

And yesterday (Sunday) we treated ourselves to another local institution – climbing to the top of the town to visit the House on Crutches Museum. (I forgot to take a photo of the outside so click on the link to see it). We hadn’t been for two years, but it’s a wonderfully quirky collection, revealing many aspects of Bishop’s Castle history, in particular how it featured on the ancient drovers’ route out of Wales, a way of life and of making a living that survived some 800 years. At the top of the rickety stairs that we both managed to fall up, I stopped to take this view down the High Street: a sleepy Sunday in Bishop’s Castle.

Today as I write this, on the last day of June, we are having our hottest day so far this year, apparently 29 degrees C (84 degrees F) at 3 pm this afternoon at Shropshire’s weather station in Shawbury. Now at 6 pm it’s 26 degrees in the house, but there’s a pleasant breeze in the garden, as there has been all day. Tomorrow, temperatures begin to fall, and in fact by next Sunday it will be 12 – 15 degrees C, this according to YR the Norwegian Met Office, which is pretty good on UK weather. And this may also mark the beginning of rain. At last! Yesterday, we had a few sprinkles and the plants all stood up tall, as if expecting a good drench. They were duly teased.

And so I’ll round this up with a shot of the snapdragons that have flowered heroically all through June, and with not a drop of water from me. They are pretty much over now and making lots of seed. I think I’ll give them their heads. Next June I could have a whole bed of snapdragons. How wonderful would that be.

The Changing Seasons is hosted monthly by Brian at bushboys world and Ju-Lyn at Touring My Backyard. Please pay them a visit.

Garden Treasures: The Salvaged And The Self-Seeded

Well, this was a big surprise last week, and a very lovely one too. It is the unexpected outcome of a little rescue job performed over a year ago, not long after we’d moved into The Gables. Back then, in the August of 2023, I was making a start on de-jungling various flower beds and found some rhizome fragments swamped by phygelius and euonymus and assorted weedy thugs. They had small spikes of green and white leaves and I thought they might be Japanese iris so I replanted them in a cleared corner and pretty much forgot about them. They certainly didn’t do anything last summer, and when I looked at them early this spring I decided that they weren’t likely to either.

So it just goes to show what can happen when you’re not paying attention.

The spot where they’re growing is fairly sheltered, between Graham’s shed, a blackcurrant bush, the path and the hot composting bin. They are also being encroached on by some super-charged perennial helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’ (more of which in a moment). And here’s the puzzle.

When I first spotted the opening iris I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. It looked exactly like the wild yellow flag that grows in and near ponds and marshes. The only difference appeared to be the green stripy leaves. Some internet sleuthing was thus required, and this soon revealed that the iris was indeed a variegated cultivar of the wild form. But how come? There is no standing water in its vicinity. Until last week we’ve been many weeks without rain, and on sunny days, out of the wind, it’s been quite hot, leaving other herbaceous plants in parched beds.

Then I considered the size of the neighbouring helianthus clump. The first shoots are waist high already and the leaves huge. I then began to wonder if the hot compost bin has been having a hand in things. It does make a quantity of liquid gloop which, if I haven’t drained it, dribbles onto the path and onto the flower bed (?). Also the soil there is largely unimproved and thus dark and heavy; slow to dry out where the shed shades it.

Hm. Who knows? I’m just hoping that the iris will decide to stay. There are signs that the plant with the flowering stem is beginning to clump up. The smaller cuttings, in amongst a spreading geranium and rudbeckia, are also beginning to look promising. And now we’ve installed a nearby water butt, I’ve no excuse not monitor watering requirements.

All the same, all the gardening sites do call the variegated yellow flag a wetland plant, and also warn that it, too, can develop thuggish tendencies. A watching brief then.

I rescued this geranium phaeum album early last summer. I discovered it behind the compost bin, lurking mostly under the fence with next door’s garden. It’s now growing under the apple tree at the bottom of the garden, though it’s a spot prone to drying out. It’s doing better in an open sunny border along with geranium Anne Thomson. Damp shadiness is supposed to suit it best.

The recent downpours have bruised many of the geranium faces, but the rescued clumps of Johnson’s Blue (I think that’s what they are) have been putting on a good show and pleasing the bees.

Here they are with this year’s number one self-seeders: white foxgloves. They are everywhere about the garden, although there was no sign of white ones over the last two summers. I love their cool and stately demeanour.

And at the hotter end of the colour palette, in the front garden we have a row of snapdragons, self-seeded along the wall in a remarkably orderly fashion. Anyone would think I’d put them there.

They glow in late afternoon sunshine.

Throughout May we had profusions of columbines, mostly pink and dark mauve. They are actually too much of good thing on the self-seeding front, and I spend much time rooting seedlings out of the vegetable beds. But then amongst them were two plants of delicate lavender, each with a different ‘frock’, one by the green house, and another in the far corner behind an apple tree. They are over now. But I know where they are.

Six On Saturday Please visit host Jim’s lovely garden – so many treats to be found there.

Catching The Light And Finding Home

I took the header photo on March 11th, the last rays of sun over Shropshire-out-of-Wales, lighting up the first sprigs of cherry plum blossom. I have only recently identified this tree: Prunus cerasifera nigra – a native species that lives just over the hedge outside our kitchen window. Every day now, and especially when we sit down to eat, we are watching it with special attention. For it seems this tree, which I had started off disliking (for reasons explained below) has become a household treasure, albeit one ‘borrowed’ from the roadside verge next door.

When we planned the kitchen extension (to replace an ageing conservatory attached to our newly bought old house) we did not think too much about the view. The site was tight, constrained by planning regulations, conservation area considerations and an overgrown hedge (although it has been cut back), and so we assumed our new big window would mostly look out on sprawling holly and hawthorn.

But now we find we also have a tree-view. And though I’m not so keen on pink, I cannot deny its loveliness, and especially at sunset. For this was another unplanned aspect: the only possible position for the window meant it faces due west.

Two weeks ago the branches were still black and bare, a skeleton mesh against wintery skies. One week ago, with the sudden sunny spell, if we looked hard, we could spot tiny slivers of pink on breaking buds. This week we have the first blossom, a good two weeks later than last year, when our February 24th view through the landing window looked like this:

So much for all the talk of this spring being sooner and warmer etc etc than other springs. Not so in Bishop’s Castle. After the week of warmish weather, the polar vortex is now rolling out cold, cold air day after day, and the cherry plum’s impulse to flower feels arrested somehow. But then that’s alright. A slow flowering will be just fine.

Last spring, as the building work progressed we watched the blossom cloud give way to foliage production. Next we had a dense, dark, rustling canopy, the leaves almost black at first sight, and not very pleasing. When viewed from outside, the tree cast a pool of deep gloom over the garden steps which I found depressing. But then come August and the kitchen all but done, we found ourselves sitting down to supper with an unexpected light show.

Two months on – and another unexpected view – a November snowfall and an abstract work that made me think of Jackson Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm, which I think we once encountered in the New York Met, where we’d gone to escape an unanticipated May heatwave.

And so in our new home, with passing moments, hours, days, and months, (two years in August), we are coming to know our closest neighbour, the cherry plum. Its fruits are said to be edible and good for jam. I managed to discover a single one last year. It was deep red and round, bigger than a cherry, with a firm skin that seemed to scrunch when I bit into it. It had a sweet-and-sour taste that made me think of Chinese plum sauce. Back then I did not know about its eating potential, and anyway I think the tree has grown too tall for elder scrumping forays.

But never mind. It has anyway inspired me to think more kindly about our horrid hedge, and how to deal with some ugly gaps just beyond the window. I’ve discovered cherry plums are good for hedging so I’ve recently planted three white flowered saplings, hoping that (in the not too distant future?) the blossom will cheer both us and passing neighbours. And maybe there’ll be fruit too – for us and the birds.

There are other bonuses of course. When I was out on the far side of the hedge preparing the ground for planting, there was much chatting with locals who wanted to know what I was up to. And indeed, why I’d come to live in Bishop’s Castle, and where was I before. All good questions and a good start too to feeling, after a few unsettled years, that we’ve at last come home.

Lens-Artists: Life’s Changes This week Anne sets us a theme rich in possibility. Interpret it as you may, but first see her post for an inspiring tale of personal development.

Spring!

Or is it?

February in Britain often teases, bringing us a sudden mild and sunny day, as it did last Saturday, followed by bone biting winds (today). Countryman poet, John Clare 1793-1864, wrote a poem about February fickleness. I probably mentioned this time last year. It’s worth a read.

So: we have crocus and snowdrops, and the odd daffodil. Also hellebores, both waning and waxing. On the garden steps the winter pansies still thrive, although all but blustered out of their pot.

We have only a small scatter of snowdrops in the Farrell domain, but everywhere else about the town, in gardens, under lane-side walls and hedges there are drifts and drifts. Reinforcements, then, needed at The Gables for next year.

At the top of the garden steps the dark hellebore has just begun to flower. Very striking when the sun catches it. Meanwhile, in the pot below, Hellebore Christmas Carol is winding down after a three month performance. Although having said that, this morning I noticed there are new buds forming beneath the gone-to-seed blooms.

The clump of tiny crocus at the top of this post popped up this week by the front gate. Most welcoming of them. This particular variety also seems to be growing in every Bishop’s Castle garden. And of course there are the chunkier sorts too, a whole host in fact spotted in the grounds of the Wintles eco-houses:

Outside the kitchen window (on the far side of our horrid hedge) the ornamental cherry tree is now displaying the faintest haze of plum coloured buds. They will be candy floss pink when they open. Not a favourite colour, but still a sight to look forward to against a blue spring sky.

And talking of the horrid hedge, those of you who follow my gardening pursuits will know that last year I was doing battle with it: untangling swathes of ivy, pulling out decayed hawthorn branches, unpicking very prickly vegetation that had knitted itself into a chicken wire fence running the length of the back garden, whingeing about the forest of saplings – ash, sycamore and elder that had grown amongst the holly, privet, weigela and hawthorn, all of which meaning you pretty much need a chainsaw to keep it in check.

In an ideal world I would have it dug out and replanted with wildlife-human friendly species. In fact, looking at 1990s photos of it, I don’t think it was ever deliberately planted as a hedge: more a case of boundary holly trees and shrubs suckering up together with arboreal interlopers and encasing a very rotten field fence.

But then a few weeks ago I had a notion. I discovered I could buy individual wild hedging plants and so fill in gaps between existing thickets. We have now popped in bird cherry, field maple and briar rose whips. We also have a more substantial hornbeam still to plant on the sunny side of the biggest gap created by our recent building work.

My hope is that, as the new plants become established (well trained of course), we can then cut back the main stems of the ash, sycamore and overgrown weigela, encouraging them to sprout more usefully (and manageably) from the base. That’s the plan anyway. One for the long term, methinks.

And apart from this, and in rare dry spells, my other betwixt-winter-spring gardening pursuit has involved digging out the compost bin. Last year I’d filled it with dug up lawn. And oh, what lovely stuff it’s become. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me – a lovely big pile of crumbly dirt. Perhaps enough for two raised beds.

Time to start some seed sowing then…

The Grateful Gardener

We have snow here in the Castle. We woke up to it early yesterday. What a shock. Snow in November. It’s much too soon. I’d seen the weather forecast of course, but was expecting only a spot of sleet that would soon melt away with the global boiling, not several inches of real snow, the sort perfect for snowballs.

Anyway, it’s not the snow I’m grateful for, but I do love the brilliant blue sky it’s brought with it. And also this golden Rowan tree in its white cocoon. It stands just outside our garden, and provides us with some borrowed treescape. And it, in turn, has recently been much loved by the birds, especially the blackbirds. Before the snow came they were busily stripping the stems.

I’ll miss the berries when they’ve gone. On bright autumn days they light up like jewels. This is how they looked in early October. A tree full of joy. Thank you, Rowan.

The snow fall also focused my eye on the latest garden addition: a Jelly King crab apple tree. Yesterday morning while sitting at the kitchen table eating my porridge, I could see its clutch of red apples glowing like little beacons at the bottom of the garden. Time for a photo then, and to say how very pleased I am with this Halloween birthday gift from my other half. Thank you, Graham.

It came a few days before my birthday, delivered in a tall box to the front doorstep, whither I was directed to investigate the new arrival. Once I’d broken through the cardboard, I was surprised to find the little tree had come with eight tiny apples still firmly attached. There were also a dozen loose ones in the bottom of the box, sadly not quite enough to make crab apple jelly, but filling me with high hopes. I decided to keep them as a spur to locating a wild tree. I thought I knew where there was one. And so it proved. Last week I found a fine crop of fallen apples in a patch of woodland on the way to the builders’ merchants. We now have crab apple jelly. No need to wait for the little tree to do its stuff then.

And speaking of stuff – we still have some of the salad variety growing outdoors and in the greenhouse.

This year I’ve grown Red Radicchio endive. For the past few weeks it’s been growing fatter by the day, and as temperatures lower, the more red it becomes. I’ve been plucking the outer leaves with hopefully plenty more to come. In the greenhouse I have tubs of red Chinese mustard, Moroccan Cress which grows like a cut and come again lettuce and a few oakleaf lettuces. Also some lettuces out in the garden, though they may have succumbed to the snow. Likewise the marigolds. But it makes me very happy to find a bowl full of fresh salad leaves in late November. Thank you, garden.

And one little plant that is standing up to the snow, once I’d dug it out it earlier today:

These sweet little hearts ease type pansies have been flowering for weeks and weeks in a pot on the garden steps. And they’re still going strong. They were a gift from my sister. Thank you, Jo.

Lens-Artists: Gratitude This week Tina sets the theme, both timely and thoughtful. Please visit her ever lovely blog.

Six On Saturday: Of Flying Saucers, Scorpionweed And An End To The Great Gobbling

And no, we have no extra-terrestrial sightings here in Bishop’s Castle, at least not over The Gables, but I do have a few Flying Saucer Morning Glories. They are late on parade, growing up my obelisk of butter beans in the front garden. I wasn’t really expecting them: the seed was several years old. Yet here they are, busy luring insectkind.

Also in the front garden, in the opposite bed, the phacelia has been flourishing for the past few weeks, every day alive with bee hum.

This borage family member hails from North and Central America where it also goes by the name of Scorpionweed, which sounds hair-raising. So far there has been no sign of cohabiting scorpions (no doubt a huge comfort to other half who was bitten on the foot by one while overlanding in the Sahara.)

I sowed the seeds quite late, probably around the beginning of July. As with the Flying Saucers, I was prepared for them not to germinate. The packet was left over from Wenlock allotment days. I grew it back then either as green manure or a cover crop. But then on a trip out in late June I’d spotted fields of it around Ludlow. I’d never seen it growing on an agricultural scale before. It was in full bloom and the fields seem to float in a mauve haze. More than a good enough reason to try it.

These days there is much farmer emphasis on improving soils and attracting insects on land taken out of food production (food security no longer seems to be a priority in government policy for British agriculture). Hairy crops like phacelia, vetch, linseed have been found to improve worm populations, this even in light and sandy soils.

I decided to try it on the ground where we had lifted paving slabs and left behind a layer of old mortar which had mostly been broken up into the soil. It looked very unpromising territory, and I wanted to see if anything would grow there. And it did. The seeds sprouted in a few days.

Usually if you’re growing phacelia to provide green manure, it should be dug in before it flowers to stop self seeding. But I thought never mind about that. The flowers are so pretty, their scent so subtle and, while they last, their kindness to insects immeasurable. The first frost will doubtless fell the plants, and I’ll probably leave them to dig in before spring.

And here’s another insect friendly plant, doing its end of season feeding duty while looking lovely too: Caryopteris ‘Heavenly Blue’, a fairly compact hardy shrub bought back in the spring. It clearly loves our garden and has opened its branches so generously. The flowers are scented too, and it’s taken over catering duties from the neighbouring purple agastache, which is now a mass of dusky seed heads and no longer of interest to the bees.

Much of the rest of garden has a look of late-summer weariness. We had a couple of real summer days earlier this week, but there’s a real sense of autumn in the offing. My runner beans simply stopped producing at the end of August, for no reason that I can fathom. Although I did notice yesterday that a single plant has decided to grow a couple of strands worth. Perhaps one last small meal then.

Meanwhile, the Flying Saucers’ hosts, the butter beans are still flowering like mad up the front garden obelisk. There are many pods but they are being very slow to fatten, doubtless down to the lacklustre summer and cold-spring start. I’m now hoping for an amiable October that might give the beans the chance to finish off. And for now, the blossom is still performing essential services.

The good news, though, is that the horrendous brassica gobbling has ceased, this after the cabbage white caterpillars ate every kale plant down to the stalks. It did not matter that I’d covered crops with so-called butterfly netting and fine grade enviromesh. Somehow the butterflies sneaked in to lay their eggs. Patrolling the plants even twice a day proved a losing battle. They made inroads in the pointy cabbages too, but I’ve managed to save some of those.

Ever hopeful, I’ve replanted Russian and Tuscan kale plantlets under extra-fine mesh. The butterflies are still about, but not in the flocks we experienced earlier in the summer. Fingers crossed.

There are other bright corners in the garden, and especially this towering clump of helianthus, a perennial sunflower. Back in the spring when I planted it out, it was three single small stems with only a few roots between them. The cuttings came from my sister’s Little Stretton garden, descendants from plants that grew in our Aunt Miriam’s Devon garden. I’m so pleased to have it. I did not have a chance to grab a segment or two of my Wenlock helianthus before we moved. It used to be the star of the late summer guerrilla garden there. It’s growing even more vigorously in Bishop’s Castle.

And last but not least, but definitely with an eye to autumn in its new russet foliage, this is a newcomer to the Farrell garden, Japanese cherry kojo-no-mai. (Posing here with some very sweet violas).

It will eventually grow into a small tree, but for now seems happy in this pot.

Six on Saturday Please visit Jim at Garden Ruminations. He needs some get-well wishes.

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge