The raspberries and strawberries are looking much happier under a woodchip mulch. I'm hardly watering them — just every couple of weeks at the moment.

I can’t stand lazy gardening, so I won’t fully adopt it until I’m fit enough to swing the pickaxe around again. Hopefully, we get some decent rain in the next couple of weeks, followed by a warm spell to really get the plants going.

It’s looking like an excellent year for peaches, and the apricot tree is absolutely loaded!

It’s been too warm for the azaleas.

All the showers have missed my area, so desert-like conditions persist.

The modern climate seems upside down—dry springs when plants desperately need moisture to establish, followed by cool, wet summers just when warmth is needed to ripen crops.

Full-sized image: https://i.postimg.cc/xY3q4fsm/Snapchat-1843814785.jpg 

My two rhododendron didn't even flower this year! Although they've seen better days so a systematic chop and regeneration is on the cards over the next couple of years.

We've had rain, but nothing truly meaningful. The borders here are starting to look how i'd expect them to in mid summer. Many plants i'd expect to have seen mid-summer are early this year and are well underway with their displays. I think a late spring chop might be in order for some just to prolong them.

Faux rain aside, its the wind thats been the real issue here and the past few days have been really damaging. I've lost a big Rhus to the relentless gusting winds and many other plants / shrubs / trees are getting dessicated as theres not enought moisture in the soil to counteract the transpiration.

It amazes me the meltdown some folk on the other threads have been having with the recent change in the weather - which hasn't taken enough of a turn in my opinion! Its still warm and incredibly dry. I can only imagine these folk don't appreicate the natural world enough to fully understand how problematic climate change is becoming. I guess knotted hankies and flip flops are the blinkered benchmark of a good summer for them.

I agree with that rant. The recent near gales broke several plants in my garden. The Chelsea Chop though extends the season if done on the right plants. After the recent 'rains' in fact just a few hours after, I was watering large pots which had dried out. The rain was an insignificant pin prick in the greater scheme of things. But living a place with an 'interesting' climate certainly many Med based ones, means gardening is full of challenges there. Jiriean hail storms and tornadoes in Cyprus, African dust where Brians been... Hell?

I hope they recover NMA. Wind is by far the most irritating form of weather for me as a gardener.

Its funny, my plants got the Chelsea Chop last year because they put on so much vegetative growth due to the rain. This year they'll get the same because they put on so much floriferous growth because of the warm & dry weather we've had!

I'm also keen to point out that I absolutely love a settled spell, and this spring has been amongst the best i've experienced. I just recognise that its best when the weather is functioning at an equilibrium.

We live in a great place for gardening, but the climate certainly keeps us on our toes! 

LOL! What type is pruning is "natural" then? I don't see much of it in nature. 

Ha! Thats an odd suggestion when you consider that the vast majority of what we grow are unnatural cultivars. The very characteristics we have bred into them necessitate additional care requirments, such as seasonal pruning, staking, dead heading etc.

I'll be the first to let my garden take on a chaotic wildness, as its very much my style, but if my hylotelephium are about to flop then they're getting the chop!

Quite West. It did come from someone who's a deeply green and believes in nature doing whatever with zero human input.

This was in connection with some 'wild gardening' somewhere.

Rabbits and deer can prune plants to name two species but should humans do it to make the flowering season artificially longer? No.

Life's too short for an an exchange of diverging or opposite views for me in this instance.

So the Chelsea Chop remains in my armoury.

https://www.bethchatto.co.uk/a-z/e-h/hylotelephium/ 

Beth Chatto I never met her but I have a catalogue of hers from the Nineties. 

A plant that grows well here IMBY - A staple of any wildlife garden in late summer and autumn, the low, showy flowerheads of hylotelephiums attract bumblebees, honeybees, hoverflies and butterflies in abundance. Some are becoming naturalized in our landscape outside of gardens, so steps should be take to avoid their spread into natural habitats. Oops. Some people seriously suggest plants like these need to be repatriated to where they originate from. I would agree with hybrid cultivated daffs but you stir a witches cauldron when you venture into this kind of territory. 

Snowdrops? Incredible and beautiful plants. Most people believe they are native to Britain and wouldn't dream of banning them. 

Enough for a Saturday.

We visited Beth Chatto's garden in the 1980s when she was experimenting with drought-resistant plants though her formally named 'Gravel Garden' came later. She died in 2018 at the age of 94 and her granddaughter now runs a much extended suite of gardens.

Somewhere I planned to visit when I lived that way but never got round to doing so.

Some very welcome rain yesterday here in E-Sussex. A touch over 20mm in 24hrs, and the garden has responded well!

I'm hoping Moomin's crystal ball is going to come up trumps this week with some proper rain to end the longest driest period in the UK I can remember (IMBY). What rain we've had has dissipated soon after falling. Just back from the lakes across the road. Lowest I've seen them and down by about a metre and a half.

My water bill will be significant this year. I began watering pots in March and I've continued almost without stopping.

Even the front gravel garden still needs watering from time to time. 

Mine went up by 52% this year and, as I'm not on a meter, I'm using 52% more water than usual as a protest. It does, however, mean the borders are looking nice and lush this year, and even the grass is greener than it would be (as I make sure I use half a watering can each time my puppy pees, so as to stop the grass being scorched. It's doing the trick *and* making the grass grow too! Any sympathy towards or desire to help the water companies has evaporated as quickly as the light rain we've had over the past few weeks.)

Agree. A sustained few days of moderate rainfall would be most welcome now.

I estimate my water bill to be much higher too. I only water my borders when i see visible signs of stress, but this seems to be every 3 or 4 days at the moment. Usually the hose only comes out for such purposes perhaps 4 or 5 times per year but its already easily been a dozen or more times now (i don't think it came out at all last year!).

Compounding my over consumption are the 7 large trees i planted back in march, which need regular establishment watering, and my baby and toddler, who both require a bath every evening. 

I agree with Darren, i used to try my best to contribute to the greater good re water consumption, but my enthusiasm in that regard has waned in recent years. 

C'mon rain. 

My  water bill is ridiculously cheap ( £32 p.m) but we are on a water meter and use water butts. I see it differently. Water is the most valuable of our utilities. You die without drinking water and you get cholera if you don't have sewage treatment. I'm getting both of these for £100 p.m less than my energy supply! Can you imagine having as much electricity or gas as you want without paying extra! Metering should be compulsory. All of these wrongly privatised utilities put their shareholders first! Why do the Water Companies get more venom than the others that are ripping us off? Gas and electricity don't have the same degree of challenges either. Water Companies have ancient pipework and sewers which can't easily be replaced without astronomical disruption compared to the others. They have suffered from population explosion and building allowed on flood plains. Local authorities have allowed SUDS rules to be broken with massive growth of non-porous paved driveways causing excess flooding. People don't like sewage works being built near them yet they can't be built just anywhere. The users also cause a lot of the problems by flushing fats, plastics and other nasties down the toilets which cause massively expensive problems down the line. People take too many showers and think water is free. Whilst I agree with all criticism of the management re. investment and paying out to shareholders that is also caused by the users who voted for privatisation - that's what private companies do!

We can't claim to be concerned about climate change by having solar panels and EV's and trying to use less electricity without trying to do the same as users to make water usage less and not use bad practices that wreck sewage treatment processes then whinge when they don't work as they were designed to!

Yes - not so far from here and have visited recently. We have a raised bed for flowers in the front of our house and which is dry at the best of times and this year, well! What we have found fantastic is Sea Holly (Eryngium). If people don't know it is a blue thistle with blue stems as well. The bees absolutely love it and I have counted as many as 20 on one clump. Being a beach plant it loves the dry. I have thought of trying a few cacti as well!

https://www.bethchatto.co.uk/a-z/e-h/eryngium/ 

Its hard to believe that 12 months ago i was remodelling the borders after many of my mediterranean species died following the appallingly wet period that started Aug 2023. My salvias had simply disappeared by spring 24!

My renewed efforts now will be in focussing more on drainage and moisture retention...which can be synonymous and are vital for an effectively functioning climate resiliant garden.

Perhaps next year i will finally get to grips with our unpredictable weather. 

There's a Community Orchard Day as part of the Festival of Chichester next Tuesday, organised by Transition Chichester.

https://festivalofchichester.co.uk/event/event-co10-discover-community-orchards-at-oaklands-park/ 

which has a link to notes on the 42 trees, mostly apples planted there

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twocommunity/PostMessage?t=15766&f=8 

I wrote the original notes, and I'm currently updating them. Of most relevance to TWO members is the current interest in 'chilling hours', the number of winter hours between 0-7C. These are needed to 'break' dormancy and get good flowering and cropping.

Most traditional British apples (e.g. Cox, Bramley) need 700-1000 chilling hours and there is some concern that with global warming that these varieties may become unviable in southern Britain. We in Sussex would then have to move to varieties such as Gala or Golden Delicious for reliable cropping. These only need 500-600 hours.

There's no need yet to go to extremes in the UK but Israel has developed the variety Ein Shemer which needs 300 hours and the extreme is Dorsett (sic) Golden from the Bahamas which only needs 100.

The pots and containers require daily watering. The blackbirds which have had several broods really struggle in this dry and heat and I'll get some live mealworms for them. 

The sparrows seem content enough picking spiders off the windows and eaves of which there are plenty.

The garden and countryside has that late August look this year.

The heat over the last week has accelerated the rate of leaf loss around here. In places the floor is covered in brown leaves and it looks like late October. Everything looks parched in the garden and many plants have flowered early. 

The plus side has been the number of insects of every kind has been the most I can remember for many many years. Also it seems that many birds have been able to raise more than 1 brood.