It’s suddenly cooler so I feel I can get out into the garden again. There is such a limited amount I can do in this drought, but I plant a few leftover dahlias and cosmos (only to find out towards the end of the week that a hosepipe ban is being imposed) and do quite a bit of tidying and cutting back in the borders. It feels good. I turn the desiccated compost and get some water into it to help things along. Like any other living creature, the organisms that power the decomposition process need water, and if there is no water, they can’t function.
We spend the evening in a friends’ garden watching the most delightful village production of The Wind In the Willows. Their garden has been home to the Blewbury village outdoor theatre for 50 years, and people flock there from miles around to see the performances each summer. It feels like an old-fashioned tradition is being kept alive, and it’s so enjoyable to be transported out of real life for a few charmed hours as the sun goes down.
I find myself on a hot, dry allotment in the beautiful countryside around Great Malvern. I’m here to meet Katerina Knight, a textile artist who makes the most beautiful pieces using dried petals stitched into fabrics. She is young and completely passionate about what she does, having discovered the healing powers of gardening after several years in the fashion industry and realising it wasn’t for her. She describes her work and shows us her half-size allotment plot, where she grows the material for her textiles. ‘The beauty of this is that you only need a very small amount of petals or seeds,’ says Katerina. ‘Even from one stem of lavender you get such a lot of material. You don’t even need a garden - you could just have a couple of pots, or go out and forage for flowers.’
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