In the garden:  Yew can’t go wrong with this hedge...

The crops are ripening nicely as August arrives. This is the month to fill the larders and it looks like a good one for apples and pears, plenty of plums too.

These are some of the best producing fruits in our climate.

Soft fruits can be difficult, with our variable sunshine affecting ripening and harvesting. Raspberries, loganberries, strawberries, and tayberries have all been producing well this year with a dry and sunny spring getting things off to a flying start.

The hedgerows are laden with blackberries which need to be harvested quickly to avoid spoiling by insects. The sloes are beginning to appear on the blackthorn and haws look plentiful on the whitethorn now too as they start to fill out.

Sloes are commonly used to flavour gin and also in wine-making, they have a sour taste.

Haws can be used to make jellies and wine, but are probably best associated with being an important food source for birds rather than for human consumption.

The garden does begin to look a little jaded in August and it can be a good time to do some cutting back to encourage a second flush of flower or foliage taking us into the autumn.

Dead-heading is also a great way of keeping the flowers coming. Some plants respond better to cutting back than others and the weather is a factor also as, if conditions are very dry, then severe cutting plants back can result in scorching and drying out - not the desired result of a second flush of flowers!

Catmint, lavender, herbaceous geraniums and lady’s mantle will all respond well to a little trim now with the possibility to further flowering before the growing season draws to a close.

Alstromeria are an excellent herbaceous perennial that produce flowers which are great as cut flowers. They become very tired and bedraggled at this time of the year and will produce a second, shorter flowering if the spent stems are removed by pulling them out at the base rather than cutting them back.

The pulling out action stimulates new flowering stems to be produced from the base of the plant. In a similar way to harvesting rhubarb, it is better to pull the stems out at the base rather than cutting them to prevent entry points for disease, and this results in a more robust harvest.

The hedges are looking fluffy now and will benefit from a trim. When left until later in the summer, then they will only need to be trimmed once and they still have time to recover some growth before winter.

A hedge is a valuable element in the garden for wildlife, screening and creating mystery where everything is not revealed all at once. The choice of hedge is huge and it depends on what it is needed for.

One of the best evergreen hedges has to be yew, Taxus baccata. It is a native plant with dark green foliage producing red berries and will need pruning once a year to keep it in check. It does take a few years to fill out and establish so some patience is needed at the outset.

It will provide a very formal hedge and a great backdrop for herbaceous planting and solid screening with its evergreen foliage.

Be aware that every part of this plant is poisonous except the red fleshy coating on the seeds.

Hedges are a haven for birds to nest and forage, they provide a wildlife corridor at the base, giving safe passage to any critters that may visit the garden.

Many hedges are planted specifically to provide screening and shelter for a garden, but do not underestimate their value for wildlife.

Tomatoes are producing well under cover now as are courgettes, cucumbers and aubergines. They all enjoy the higher temperatures and generate a better harvest when they get these conditions during summer. Keep them well watered and continue to feed with tomato food every week to keep the harvest coming.

The grass is beginning to slow down now and wildflower areas are going to seed earlier than other years this year, as a result of the dry and sunny periods that we have had during the summer.

Cutting down the meadow and removal of the wildflower and grass clippings is an important aspect of managing the meadow as in doing so we remove fertility from the soil. This is the key to having a flower-rich meadow, creating soil conditions in which wildflowers will thrive.

Grass is a great competitor and will out-compete many wild flowers in good, rich fertile soil. Removing the clippings after they have dropped their seed will help to keep the fertility down in addition to adding a seed bank to the soil for potential flowers for the following year.

Plant of the Week

Phlox paniculata is a wonderful summer flowering perennial with a classic summer, cottage garden fragrance which evokes for me childhood summers. It comes in a wide range of pastel colours and flowers from June through to August.

It is clump-forming and benefits from division every 3-5 years to keep it at its flowering best. Great for pollinators providing nectar and pollen and also a great cut flower.

Phlox paniculata ‘Famous Cerise’ is providing a great pop of colour right now in the herbaceous border. The Royal Horticultural Society have been studying many garden plants over the last few years to assess how valuable they are for pollinators and recently updated their pollinator guide online. It lists garden, native and plants of the world that are valuable pollinators and it makes for interesting reading.

Check out https://www.rhs.org.uk/science/research/plants-for-pollinators for more details.