I think one thing many of us share, while at the same time not sharing, is our preoccupation with the weather in the garden. Our gardens are drastically informed by the weather we get. It inevitably dictates what and how we grow.
I’m not thinking of the climate emergency. Or climate disasters. I’m just reflecting on our every day discontent, or occasionally joy, in the weather which is sent to our gardens. In England and Wales we are generally blessed with merely troublesome weather and it manages to oil our conversations and feed our preoccupation with forecasts endlessly. Unlike our near neighbours who live on a large continental landmass, where weather can stay fixed for weeks and weeks, our island gives us almost constant variability.
Here is our Met Office forecast for today and this week.
This year, we have had a generally and unusually mild winter. I left some nemesia plants outside in pots because I’d never found them worth overwintering indoors. And I was being lazy. (Really?!) Their next season revival always seemed pathetic so not worth bothering with. However, the plants that had been sitting outside all winter this year revived in early spring and recently began flowering their socks off. Fabulous – and evidence of the mild winter.
Nemesia revived, with no help from me.
But we’ve also had drought. I read somewhere that we had half our usual winter rain. This makes us pity those in the south east of the country who often seem to have droughted gardens in summer without any extra droughting.
July in the South East of England.
It has been followed by a dry spring. So we have been checking our weather apps several times a day.
I have a radar app. Which generously shows me all the showers which sail past us.
We are the black blob, with a shower sailing past..
And when we’re opening the garden, it shows me huge blocks of rain heading our way. I have been known to refer to our garden as Drought Buster. And true to form yesterday, after many modest showers which made little impression on the rain gauge, the rain has come along with our first garden opening of the year.
And although it reduced our visitor numbers drastically, I have been rejoicing in the rain and have been out in it checking the good and the bad of it.
One iris got zapped.
They do get top heavy, so real wet does this. Charles is not happy.
Remaining iris flowers have been staked…….
And this happens everywhere – walking round the garden after heavy rain you’ll get soaked. So before we open we’re often rushing round with a wheel barrow cutting back the droops.
We can’t do much about this, as the path is an intrinsic part of the ruined cottage, but it gets horribly slippery…
And indoors this happens, which is why we have hard floors where you come in.
However, along with a sudden surge of happy growth, there are delights in the rain.
Bronze fennel in the rain.
and
A clematis seedhead.
and the moss revives. We would hate to lose the moss on our stone walls and this is just at a convenient feeling height….
So – today w̶e̶ I, and the garden, are rejoicing. May you all have the weather you wish for.
Anne, this speaks so much to the challenges of managing the complex intricacies of display garden design. I’m blessed to be limited to sorting what’s happening wx-wise at any given time for a handful of clients with more modest home plantings, and simply whether to make the trip. Though we all live in the same county within 10-25 miles of each other on the Downeast coast, our two geographical points on the same peninsula tend to fall within different weather lines & are subject still to dramatically different microclimates. No longer do I rely on the National Weather Service forecast for each zip code. Eyes on the real time radar or bust.
The most troubling trend to me is actual rain fall rates.
In so far as my weather station is accurate (and I’m certain right now it is not), we’ve been experiencing increasing episodic localized rain rates of of 4-6+”/hr over the past several years. The most dramatic example was during a 20 minute thunder storm a year ago in April. It was one of those days with probably a 20% chance of rain here. The total rainfall from the storm might have been 1/4-1/2,” but our home weather station registered -if only briefly- a 6″/hr rate during the downpour. Whether the reported rate was actually 6″/hr or not, subjectively I’ll say it was consistent with my experience of 4-5″+, and well beyond whatever the Davis Station threshold is to trigger “It’s raining cats & dogs!”
Grounds and drainage management can be dealt with over time. It’s very difficult to protect plants from these kinds of sudden sideways fire hoses and cloud cistern dumps.
Now that is taking very seriously. I can feel an addiction coming on…
Wish I was joking. The other title in my inbox tonight:
“FEMA Hazard Mitigation Program; federal funding online workshop for Hancock County,”
I’d still rather drag hoses than run desperately around the house with gutter extensions.
I just retired as floodplain coordinator for my county. No more FEMA training
Yeah!
Well done!
Thank you for owning that professsional tour of duty!
If you’d like to unretire, this area around Acadia NP could use a hand. Meantime, happy gardening.
I’m not rejoicing. But then it’s not me that takes on the job of dragging hoses around the place when we have a drought (note if you are thinking of putting in taps in the garden, put in more and more widely than you are inclined to). I was gutted when I saw my lovely iris broken off at the base in full flower. And now I’m soaked having spent an hour cutting back wet cardoons while some people sit at their desks. Hey ho. I’d rather the British climate than most though.
Anne, when did you start this wierd habit of doing anything to tidy the garden before opening? I’ve always thought that one of the nice things about Veddw was that you didn’t and so we get to see a garden that isn’t curated to within an inch of its life.
John – you know that the garden has always been immaculate!
I live in California. We have a dry-Summer Mediterranean climate to start, but now we are experiencing the worst year yet of a multi-year drought. Our annual rainfall comes mostly December-January, and already measures under 20″ in a typical year. But since the start of the year, our deficit is over 10″ – we are missing more than half the average annual. Then yesterday, amid increasing water restrictions, brown lawns, and an impending heat wave, Ma Nature delivers us a small rain system. It was inconsistent, delivering a relative deluge to some spots and just a light mist to others. Of course gardeners on social media could not agree if rain at this point in the season was a good or bad thing. “Free water!” But also “the cherries are ruined!” And some “At least it knocked the dust off the pears.” I enjoyed the break from heat and oppressive sun & got a good bit done. It was nice to have some weather to talk about aside from asking “Hot enough for ya?”
I have noted your drought with great sympathy – and I’m glad you had a small respite. One of the mad things I get to hear about a little light water is that the plants will all rush their roots up to the surface and then will die because they really need to go deep. Hope yours are not all going in the wrong direction…
Thank you for sharing your bronze fennel in the rain.
We are having rain today in the Chicago area and we need it. The sound is lovely.
Rain after a long lack is a wonderful sound – and smell = petrichor. Hope you get lots!
petrichor! Never knew there was a word for that wonderful smell. Adding it to my vocabulary
Treasure it – you’ll enjoy sharing one day at an opportune rainy moment.
I love the old saying, “whether the weather is cold, or whether the weather is hot, we’ll weather the weather, whatever the weather, whether we like it or not.”
It’s right, too – we do…
Last week I welcomed a tour of Master Gardeners into the garden I’ve made for my mother. I had been congratulating myself for scheduling us first on the list of gardens, as the plants would be freshest then and not fading in the heat. Of course, the night prior we had four inches of downpours, which kept going until just before the cars drove up. I just had time to rinse the walk of storm detritus and no time to clip sodden blooms off the Hibiscus syriacus, so I told myself to think of the raindrops on leaves as “atmospheric” and opened the gate. All went well and at least I haven’t had to irrigate!
You got it spot on by the sound of it – everything would have been very fresh. And it stopped at just the right time!
Good post, relevant to anyone who gardens. My favourite rain is the kind that follows the laws given in the musical Camelot: “The rain may never fall till after sundown; By eight, the morning fog must disappear.” And there’s more: “July and August cannot be too hot” and “The winter is forbidden till December, And exits March the second on the dot, By order, summer lingers through September. In Camelot.” Someone knew how to organize the weather!
O, they knew their stuff, them Arthurians… brilliant.
The weather in our part of New Zealand is fairly Shakespearean at the moment: “the rain it raineth every day”, with a side order of “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! you cataracts and hurricanoes, spout!”
On the plus side, the weeds (which are flourishing in the mild winter) come out of the wet ground easily. On the downside, you hardly dare walk on the sodden earth for fear of compacting it.
Yes, I forgot that bonus of rain – how easily weeds come up. But it doesn’t need to be incessant, with added gale, for that to work….