My ability to write seems to have dried up with the ground. Two posts in two days and then nothing for a week? Welcome to the Consistently Inconsistent™️ world of the Horticulturalish substack.
The thing is I don’t know what to tell you about the garden. It is in a struggle to survive and it is awful.
The source of my outdoor tap here at Daisy Barn is a reservoir on a hill nearby and Pete has had me on a hosepipe ban since before I left for Italy.
My dream of a cutting garden overspilling with annuals is dead. Literally dead. My sweet neighbour watered my seedlings while I was away but the heat was too much. Cosmos, cornflowers, zinnias - everything was scorched.
[ Lysimachia ephemerum, 07.07.2025 ]
I dug three small, square beds before I left and planted (in turn) a blackberry bed (a gift from the apiarist, Caroline), a raspberry bed, and a blueberry bed (a fabulous specimen of ‘Elizabeth’ for my dear friend), each surrounded by alpine strawberries. But everything has fizzled and frazzled and died.
The dahlias - half of which are still in pots and half in a hastily configured ‘raised bed’ (just piled up remnants of the beds I’ve dug) - are showing almost no progress, though there is still hope in the green of their leaves.
[ Dead blueberries, 10.07.2025 ]
Nature will put things right, Pete said just now while out on his morning rounds, as (per our daily routine) Bella screamed and howled at him, and Leo tried to squeeze his tiny body through the chicken wire fence to get some human contact.
This sounds like mere optimism, but it is surely wisdom.
Pete has lived here forever. He once tried taking a holiday, he told me. A week-long trip down to Cornwall with his wife. Almost immediately upon arrival he told her ‘I’m going home, you can either come with me now or I’ll come and collect you at the end of the week’.
He intimated that it was a long, quiet car ride home. Pete doesn’t want to be anywhere else but here.
[ Dead Hydrangea macrophylla and Sidelcea 'Party Girl’, I think. 10.07.2025 ]
When I had friends to stay a few weeks ago, we got chatting during his evening visit to feed the sheep. Hannah, a friend whose PhD studies are both impressive and impossible to understand, told him that in two days time she was travelling to Alaska for a conference. Pete asks me almost every day about Hannah’s trip to Alaska. “She’s in Australia now,” I said on Tuesday. Pete seemed (very briefly) speechless.
Pete knows this land. He trusts that nature will correct what is going so badly wrong. The blossom on the trees was hugely abundant this year, he said, and his walnut tree (which he planted 40 years ago when he bought the land at the top of the hill) is covered in walnuts.
Nature will put things right.
[ Lythrum salicaria ‘Blush’, 10.07.2025 ]
He told me that things were so dire for a farmer nearby (‘up by the motorway’) that she is having to sell some cattle. He said something about a lack of winter feed the nuance of which I didn’t understand but the tone of which was easy to grasp: doom. They’re good people, he said. The subtext, I understood, was that they deserve better.
Our tree is all but dead. Other young trees I have passed are dead. I drove past a property who had evidently spent a decent amount of money planting trees along their property line by the road. Each one was dead. Here, along the lane, young trees are dead.
The fields for miles and miles are parchment pale. It is impossible not to see it as the tinderbox it is. One errant ember and the whole county would burn.
The hot tap in the kitchen takes forever to heat up, so I have been saving the water that would otherwise run down the drain in a series of kitchen receptacles. I am ill-equipped for this eco life. But this morning I had sufficient water in jars and jugs and vases to put some water on the tomatoes.
Of all the years to try and establish a garden, this was not the one to choose. The Hydrangea macrophylla that was already struggling after its abrupt move down from London has leaves as singed and crisp as fried sage.
The plants that are thriving, to my delight, are the riffraff. Lythrum salicaria and Sidalcea malviflora are doing fine. Weeds, basically. Beautiful, towering weeds.
Loosestrife became a bit of an obsessions after I saw a flower at Wisley that (unusually for that fastidious institution) was not labelled last summer. I took a photograph and consulted with my plant ID app. ‘Wand loosestrife’ it said. Planted en masse it was stunningly beautiful, this humble weed, and in the dead of August it seemed entirely content.
[ Mystery plant at RHS Wisley, 10.08.2024 ]
A light pink Sidalcea ‘Little Princess’ was one of the first plants I bought and I loved it for the two years it bloomed happily in London. It didn’t survive the transition to the fruit salad scheme but here at DB I have planted ‘Brilliant’ and ‘Party Girl’ and they’re living up to their names.
Persicaria amplexicaulis 'Firetail' and ‘Darjeeling Red’ seem thrilled. Sanguisorba hakusanensis ‘Lilac Squirrel’ - now one of my all time favourite flowers for being so exquisitely and accurately named - is bonny and bushy. To my surprise, the Verbascum ‘Southern Charm’ that I cut back weeks ago in the hopes it would re-flower is doing exactly that. The Verbena bonariensis that I resisted for so long because it is just… everywhere and seems so unimaginative, is tall and lithe and covered in bees and butterflies from dawn until dusk. As I always say: cliches are cliches for a reason.
[ Butterfly having breakfast, Verbena bonariensis, 10.07.2025 ]
But beyond the borders, the world is bone dry. The grass everywhere has turned from lush green to straw blonde. The stress - the battle to survive - is palpable.
I listened to a podcast a while ago in which there was a discussion between experts about the a possibility of a future war between countries in the Middle East over water. It will one day be a substance more valuable than oil, they said. The dire scarcity and the visceral thirst for survival will erupt. I wish I could remember what it was so that I could share it with you. I found the argument absolutely persuasive.
As I look out over this desperate, thirsty corner of Gloucestershire I wonder: will nature put things right?
So sad to hear so many lovingly planted flowers have dried up 😔 my verbena bonariensis has also thriving in this weather - it’s got SO TALL. ❤️
So very sorry to hear about your poor baby trees and plants and all your neighbours’ saplings. (I had just been reading a Guardian article about the fact that even in old woods, far more saplings are now dying than previously.) Hydrangeas seem to be really thirsty plants, don’t they? I have a small London garden where most plants are in pots as the depth of soil is so pathetic. I think this year, the fact that most of our garden is shaded for a large part of the day has helped our plants survive. We don’t have a hosepipe ban but, since early May, given the lack of rain, we’ve been saving every drop of grey water for the garden. We have a combi boiler that takes ages to heat so like you we have lots of perfectly clean water potentially going to waste. We’re now hoarding it in builders’ buckets in the shower and taking it down to fill huge plastic plant tubs without drainage holes which act as holding tanks. We also save shower water that only has soap in it (I wouldn’t put water containing anti dandruff shampoo or conditioner on the garden), all vegetable washing water, and washing up water that’s not got particularly greasy or disgusting. As a two person household we must generate enough cleanish waste water for around 70% of our garden’s needs, but I am really looking forward to some proper rain so we can stop carrying waste water downstairs. The novelty wore off weeks ago.