High summer is the garden’s Blackfriars underpass

This is what resilience is all about. High summer drains all my energy, but I can pop back inside and grab a cup of tea when I feel in need of refreshment. The garden is entirely reliant on whatever the sky might deign to lavish upon the ground below. And the sky’s not in a giving mood just now.

There are certain other places the garden can turn to. There’s the few trips I can be bothered to make with the watering can, though I wouldn’t bet the farm or anyone’s survival on these. There are the resources that can be called up from the depths of the soil, or from the energy reserves held against hungrier days in root and stem. But we’re three heatwaves in this year already. It’s not even August, and plants have been going over with indecent haste for weeks now, rushing to flower, and then to seed – an exhausting business at the best of times. To do all of this with barely hope of a drink is impressive – summer dormancy must surely beckon.

And yet so far the garden is coping. With the exception of the lawn, certain of the alchemillas (Lady’s Mantle) and the hardy geraniums which I can tell are toying strongly with a spell of estivation, there’s still a predominantly green vibe about the place. The shade helps. The dappled light of the accidental woodland edge planting I somehow instinctively set in place before my brain had even realised that this was my favourite thing – it’s a kinder location for a plant to find itself in, though while far from sunbaked, it’s still very dry. This year has been a challenge when it comes to getting things going, particularly for a gardener who appreciates a plant’s ability to get on with things once the initial introductions have been made (roots...soil. Soil...roots – I hope you’ll be very happy together), and an aversion to irrigation for anyone other than the most recently planted. And so while by now I would have hoped to have been much further ahead with planting up the edges of path, I’m just grateful that what’s already here is still clinging on, and doing so with remarkable stoicism. But there’s still more than a month of summer left, and I know the signs of drought stress will be seen even here soon, in more than the wilting hydrageas.

So while butterflies, bees and hover flies flit industriously from echinops to goldenrod, althea to Salvia yangii (have you gotten used to not calling it perovskia yet? Or even, thinking of it as a salvia? No, me neither), I know that, for the garden, this is Blackfriars underpass.