THE WEATHER -

A warm start to the month, with a beautiful clear blue sky and bright sunshine all day on the 3rd - perfect! Distant thunderstorms on the 4th, then remaining fine and warm. Very hot for the next few days with more thunderstorms on the 7th. Getting hotter and more oppressive as the week progressed, until more thunderstorms on the 11th brought fresher conditions at last. Becoming warmer again until the 22nd when a northerly wind made it feel very cold. Remaining cold for the next few days. Light showers on the 24th and 25th, but not enough rain to do any good. Becoming really warm again during the last week of the month, with lots of sunshine. Maximum temperature 31°C (88°F). Minimum temperature 6°C (44°F).

Viburnum opulus 'Harvest Gold' is a very pretty deciduous shrub or small tree, with lovely yellow foliage. The flowers are white, and are often followed by clusters of red berries. It's a plant to brighten up the border! It prefers a sunny position in order to show the golden foliage to best advantage, but if grown in shade, it still produces foliage of a lovely lime green. Well worth growing, but watch out for sawfly larvae this month, which can skeletonize a whole plant in no time at all.

Clematis are in full flower this month, and this is one which I've recently bought because I just couldn't resist it! It's called Franziska Marie, and has the most enormous double flowers of heavenly purple. All I have to do now is find somewhere to plant it!

Still on the subject of Clematis (and why not?!), here's another two beauties which have done really well this month. On the left is Crystal Fountain, which this year has scrambled over a Viburnum tinus and is a cascade of wonderful pale mauve flowers with a centre which is completely different from the rest of the flower. When the outer petals fade, this centre lingers on for a few days more, giving a completely different effect. On the right is Proteus, a large-flowered double variety of a lilac-pink colour. You can see that I favour the violet section of the colour spectrum in my planting!

Here's an interesting and beautiful shrub in full flower this month. It's called Senna didymobotrya (syn. Cassia didymobotrya), and has evergreen pinnate leaves with racemes of bright yellow flowers, with buds covered in blackish bracts - stunning! It's not hardy though, and mine is in a pot which I shall bring in to the conservatory for the winter.

Down on level 4a of the garden where it's in shade for most of the day, Diphylleia cymosa has done very well, probably due to the extremely wet spring that we had this year. Its leaves are huge and lush, and its lovely white flowers show up well against the green of the foliage. The flowers will turn to black berries on startlingly red stems later on. This is a superb herbaceous perennial plant for shade, and should be grown more often.

That's all for this month...... Happy Gardening!!

Blackbird, Blackcap, Blue Tit, Bullfinch, Chaffinch, Collared Dove, Crow, Dunnock, Goldfinch, Great Tit, Greenfinch, House Sparrow, Long-tailed Tit, Magpie, Robin, Rook, Seagull, Starling, Swallow, Thrush, Wood Pigeon, Wren.

TIME
Ursula Prout

Time fain would linger here amid the flowers
That lend their beauty to the summer’s day,
But lo, the sundial, guardian of the hours,
Lets not one moment linger by the way.

Quiet shadows lengthen in the noonday’s glare,
As wends the sun to westward of the sky,
And thoughts are lost in wonder, unaware
Of time and how so soon it passes by.

But so it is when beauty takes command,
The lovely things of God arrest the sight,
And gazing on the wonders of His hand,
Time has no part to play in our delight.