I know that technically there are two days to go before September starts, and as a big fan of long, light evenings, I’m definitely not wishing for autumn just yet. But the rains have arrived, and you could almost see the trees sighing in relief as their weary branches gave little shrugs of surprise. The new blackbirds looked a bit surprised at the puddles, and everything is generally a little more perky.

These neither-here-nor-there days, mood-befuddling days when it isn’t summer and it isn’t autumn, feel a bit like those days between Christmas and New Year, as we await the run-up to something new, something different. I never make resolutions in December, but over the last days of August my notes last year were full of things to do - finally completing the ellipse of the lawn - ideas to investigate - perhaps that longed-for summerhouse might finally materialise - flowerbeds to tweak - perhaps while I’m sorting out the grass, I should make the flowerbeds bigger ….

I haven’t decided what these in-between days should be called: the French have an excellent term; ‘La Rentrée’. Literally the return, as we go back to the daily grind after a few weeks away, in France there seems to be a renewed energy as a zip of optimism is injected into the everyday. Shops have been redecorated. Friends catch up to talk about their holidays. Children get their stationery and have smart new haircuts in readiness for the beginning of a new season. Yes, there’s real work to do, but the proper rest has had its desired effect, and the autumn is greeted with optimism.

In Italy, those obviously summery dresses will be worn less and less frequently, only coming out when it’s really too hot to do otherwise. Female friends there message each other to decide what day they’re going to pack their summer clothes away and bring out the ziplock bags of autumn tones of caramel.

Wherever we are in the world, there’s a new beginning making itself felt

And in the garden, as with all new beginnings, let’s celebrate the positives. We’re all itching to DO something. Of course we want to order bulbs. Of course we want to change and tweak - it’s entirely natural to want to take stock, and, while the garden is changing and the colours turning, now is an excellent moment to do this.

Although the garden itself may have started on the journey to winding down, everything else is definitely starting to feel new term-ish

Are you feeling Back-to-School-ish? New pencil case/ new shoes/new notebook? In the desperate need to declutter before the house move, I’m restraining myself from buying anything new. But there are plenty of questions arising. Do I REALLY need three pairs of secateurs? I feel I don’t want to jinx anything before the house survey takes place - I’ve still got to wait a couple of weeks for that and then maybe, just maybe, I might be able to share details with you.

In all of that, it really is Back to School for me next week as I start my new role as Head of Garden Design at the London College of Garden Design at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew. I cannot wait to meet the students and embark on the wonderful journey of the world that is garden design. And if you’re thinking about designing your own garden, but haven’t got a year to go to college, you might want to join the online Garden Design Studio here in The Gardening Mind- I’ve emailed Paid and Founding members this week, so do check your inboxes.

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• There are lots of jobs to be getting on with this month, and as ever, there are also lots of things I won’t be doing. This month’s list of What to Do and What Not to Do in the garden is here. You might think it’s the same every year, but the joy of The Gardening Mind is that we can be agile: there’s no lead time, so I don’t have to submit my tips three months before a magazine is printed, or a YEAR before a book is printed. So even if there’s a surprise heatwave or a freak snowstorm, our How to Garden is always as relevant and fresh as it can possibly be.

• There’s a rather fabulous tree that has adored this summer here, and we’re going to take a closer look:

  

• Shopping: bulb meadows, narcissi, alliums, and the best perennial tulips: I’m going to be looking at the first spring bulbs to order - but NOT TULIPS - DO NOT ORDER TULIPS YET, and if you do, definitely DO NOT PLANT THEM. More on why below.

  

• Garden Design Studio – if you’re a new paying member and you’re interested in this course, just comment STUDIO in the comments below and I’ll send over details. There is one place left.

There have been lots of new subscribers this week: welcome, and do have a look at THE INDEX where you’ll find your way to everything. There are hundreds of articles and many courses, including:

Border planting design

Cottage garden design

Small garden design

Yes please - I'd like to join

More below on bumper potato crops, but in the meantime, this one was dug up this weekend - surely the potato of a lifetime? It sparked a lengthy debate: a baby? Matisse? A Palaeolithic fertility symbol?

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Things aren’t necessarily all winding down, but the garden does look exhausted - apart from the roses. The roses are firing on all cylinders. And for me anyway, starting to think of things as winding down means that summer is over, and I need it to go on for as long as I can make it go!

It’s no surprise that everything is looking a little bit shabby - that’s absolutely normal for late August, and especially if you’ve had particularly hot and dry conditions, it’s a good time to remind yourself that you haven’t necessarily done anything wrong: all the plants have been working really hard to keep going, and certainly in my own garden I can see a lot of crispy stems.

• I’m deadheading all the flowers that have gone over

• I’m cutting back anything that looks like it’s had it. I’m going to give some shrubs a stay of execution: they may look dead now, but chances are that they have gone into a really early autumn, and look like they normally would in November.

• Tired containers in a prominent position may need a bit of an edit; some items are going on the compost, but as I’ve mainly had perennials in pots this year, they’ll just have a cut back when they’ve finished flowering. But those Salvia keep on coming so I can’t quite bring myself to do anything with them just yet.

  This tidy-up will make everything look a little bit better, clearing the way for some of the pretties to carry on bringing a bit of glamour for another month or so.

• The roses continue to be amazing: whilst this acer starts to put on its autumn colours, Rosa ‘Macmillan Nurse’ is bustin’ out all over as if it were June:

  

But I’m not tidying up everything

Some of those fading plants get more and more beautiful - seedheads and grasses are captivatingly beautiful, and the birds will thank you. There’s more on this later in this post.

Watering

• If the rain has come your way, that’s great, but do keep an eye on it: a heavy downpour isn’t really enough to keep pots going for more than a couple of days, so stick a finger in the compost to check. If it’s Dry dry, then water. Carry on prioritising plants that have only been in a year or so, and anything that looks stressed. And do bear in mind, established plants that are looking knackered might just be doing so because it’s September in a couple of days.

For a bit of a moodboost, go and seek out the good stuff: have a potter around and see what is looking good right now. There are some terrific late perennials, grasses and foliage, including that frowned-upon variegated (gasp) euonymus. These are the plants that you need to be noting down for future planting as it’s a good time to get out there and look at the general structure. With a lot of perennials cut back, and the leaves thinning out, you can start to get a good idea of the bones of your garden.

It’s also a good time to see what you’re missing. Any garden in the UK looks good in June, or your equivalent summer month, but if there are some massive holes in the planting now, then it’s worth thinking about now for next year. You don’t need to plant just yet, but planning will pay dividends next year.

Where there are gaps, ask yourself what’s going on. Is there not enough evergreen/woody structure? Was there too much early-flowering planting? Is there not enough foliage contrast? Is everything the same height, or all too low on the ground? Is it that something just didn’t like it there, or is it a succession issue? If it’s the latter, filling the gap with a couple of plants that work together will make a big difference next year. Here are some ideas:

I always recommend taking photos of the garden bits that aren’t working. It’s all too easy to have a whole folder of the pretty bits, and you think you’ll remember in January what it looked like now, but you won’t. Photos, notebooks! Take photographs of the ugly bits and put them in their own special folder.

If you’re new here, you might like this essential planting guide - part of the Small Garden Design course.

• There might not be quite as much to do in flower borders, but if you have a fruit or vegetable patch that hasn’t been struck by the drought, you’ll be busy harvesting. Keep picking those courgettes - it’s been a bumper year for them as well as potatoes and spinach. The blackberries, plums and the apples are pumping out - recipes for vegetable gluts welcome.

• My ‘Mirabelle’ plum tree is having another good year. Self-seeded just after I first moved here, it is producing a harvest which yet again magically hasn’t been mullered by wasps and other annoying burrowing things that surprise you when you bite in and see half of them in the plum, and know all too well where the other half has gone.

  

  Mirabelle wouldn’t necessarily be my plum of choice, as it isn’t particularly sweet and I feel it’s better as a cooking plum. Again, any ideas/recipes welcome.

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• September is the time to get out and start planting spring-flowering bulbs. BUT NOT TULIPS - please don’t plant tulips yet. Why?

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Before I start: WE HAD RAIN. Never have I been so excited to see wet seat cushions:

And then guess what? It carried on raining:

Some remarkably buzzy energy has arrived with the return of the rain and greyer skies, and I realise there’s just so much I want to tell you about that I have absolutely zig-zagged everywhere in this article: gardening on a budget, design, plants, gardening basics, pretty bouquets, and more. I also pulled out of a house purchase this week because I kept having bad dreams about it, and I’ve also fallen in love with another house. A friend commented that it looked like Paddington’s house.

I’m quite susceptible to these sorts of associations: if I found A Nice White Cottage with a Thatched Roof, I’d probably want to move there too:

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Contracts are about to be exchanged on my own house any time now, so, as you can imagine, everyone is not delighted with me. Onwards…

• With a new house in mind, I’ll have a new garden to create. BUT, the irony is that although I’m a garden designer, I couldn’t afford me, so I’ll be creating a brand new garden on a budget. I’ve put together how I’ll be starting - and I’ll be sharing the whole process with you every step of the way.

  “Create your garden slowly. Not everything needs to be done at once. Start with the essential structure and plant framework, then add things as your budget allows.”

• A reminder: the Garden Design Studio is running again this autumn - Founding members will get first dibs, followed by paying members: I’ll be emailing you separately about this, so do look out for that. There are some general details below.

• Don’t order your tulips just yet! You’ll be seduced by everyone’s lists, but do wait. I’ve designed a brand new tulip collection just for The Gardening Mind, which will be heading your way soon, but in the meantime, daffodils will not let you down.

• In this week’s HOW TO GARDEN section, together with gardening on a budget, we’ll also be taking a look at some more Storecupboard Basics: if you’re a beginner gardener and you’re wondering about the difference between hardy and tender, pot sizes, and if you’re befuddled by plant labels, today’s post is for you.

• Plant list of the week: In all the drought-tolerant plant lists that have been rolling out everywhere, the best-performing, drought-tolerant, heat-tolerant plant in many gardens hasn't been getting a mention. My rose-filled garden has been full of colour for the last two months: on Monday, I cut these blooms from my garden. I have the names of each of these for you:

  

There are HUNDREDS of articles in The Index - do come and have a browse!

• Also, remember to come and join in the weekly ‘Show Us Your Plots’ where we all share photos of green spaces wherever we may be - on Sunday morning you’ll see a post on the Chat which starts ‘It’s Sunday 23rd August and it’s time to Show Us Your Plots!’

Being of a somewhat contrary bent, I question anything presented to me as THE WAY to do something. Gardening maintenance, especially, has presented a lot of quandaries. Pruning, cutting back - why do we have to do things certain ways? Over the years, through trial and error, I’ve realised that whilst there is of course much based on science, there’s a lot which can be done more easily.

And so here in The Gardening Mind, I set about clarifying, demystifying, and sharing with you the shortcuts.

We’ve talked about the fundamental things we should think about when we’re out there making friends with our space including soil, aspect, and how to make your own compost. We’ve looked at topics such as how to buy the best plants at a garden centre, and what is an annual.

Sometimes the simplest of words can be really alienating:

There are certain bits of gardening knowledge which soon become second nature, but which, to begin with, are somewhat frightening. When you hear people talking about good do-ers and thugs, you could be forgiven for thinking that you’ve ended up in some dodgy corner of the world. The fact is, it’s all common sense.

‘Good do-er’ is a really handy expression - I’m not sure it’s used outside the world of gardening? It’s basically shorthand for any plant that is reliable, performs well, and perhaps even tolerates a bit of a mullering. The first that spring to mind are Geranium ‘Rozanne’, Rosa ‘New Dawn’, Alchemilla mollis, though I know the last can be a bit of a thug - another handy horticultural term for plants which spread and smother if left to their own devices, but with a bit of an intervention here and there, can actually be your friend. You’ll probably have a list of your own old faithfuls too.

Here’s how we kicked off the How To Garden series:

You can find all the articles here in How to Garden - practical know-how.

In Today’s Storecupboard Basics, we’re going to be looking at how to garden on a budget, and how to read a plant label:

Yes, I have finally made a decision, having wavered over and then pulled out of the house I was about to buy. There was something that just wasn’t quite right, and however bad I felt for everyone else, I just had to go with my heart.

There are still all sorts of hoops to jump through, but I have found a house. I’ll miss my rose-filled garden here, but the new one has got a small garden to be made. And I have NO BUDGET for it. I’m hoping you’ll join me on the journey:

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The sun continues to beat down here in this corner of the UK. Having been very nonchalant about the whole coping-in-a-heatwave business, even I succumbed yesterday as we ended up in the Cotswolds and sloped round Hidcote Manor and Kiftsgate Court on basically what seemed like the surface of the sun.

It feels as if everyone’s in holiday mode, so I’m going to take us off on a virtual holiday, to a garden that I first took you to back in 2022, and have a look to see the transformation it has undergone.

If you’re landing here at The Gardening Mind for the first time, welcome - I’m just so happy that you’ve found us. I started this newsletter over four years ago, with the aim of sharing everything I know about garden design, plants and gardens. There’s garden design ideas, easy how-tos, plant recommendations, border planting tips and tricks, zoom get-togethers and lots more — have a look at the archive for design articles, plant profiles, garden challenges, short courses and tutorials. The Index is updated weekly.

There’s the Small Garden Design course to follow, Garden Design Case Studies and Garden Dilemmas. There are sections on City Gardens, Planting Design, Country Gardens, and Wildlife Gardening. You’ll find lots of ‘before and after’ examples, too, which I’m hoping will help show you what’s possible. And I’ll be announcing dates for the new Garden Design Studio course in a couple of weeks’ time, so do look out for that.

Yes please, I'd like to join

• This week, we’re going on that trip back to a secret garden in Venice.

• We’re also going to be taking a look at some excellent climbers for shade.

• And I’ve got a container idea for August - low-maintenance and useful.

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FREE TO READ!

If you’re new to The Gardening Mind, thank you ever so much for joining this lovely community, now entering its fifth year here on Substack. It exists purely due to the support of its readers - thank you.

You’ll find a lot here - I’m sharing everything I’ve learned about gardens and garden design over the last thirty years years: have a s…

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If you’re anything like me, you might have got to the end of this first week of August and wonder what’s going on - is it summer? Is it autumn? What should I be doing? Am I on holiday? Can I get through the book pile? Can I finish a manuscript for a book project that I’ve been working on since 2022?

Basically - it’s summer. It’s that mid-summer holiday feeling when you lose all track of time, but as an adult, you do actually have to do some work too. Yet that feeling of needing to take time away is niggling. So, it’s absolutely the right time for the second part of our Summer Specials - the idea of a whole pick and mix of things definitely makes me feel like I’m on holiday - you can find Part 1 here.

Here in The Gardening mind we’ve spent the last few weeks looking at what’s doing well in the garden; today, all of a sudden, either the temperature has cooled down or else I’m getting used to it, and I’m feeling like we could probably get out there and do some stuff. There’s a plant which is doing extraordinarily well both here and in lots of other gardens, and I think it should go on your plant lists for next year. I’m also going to take a look at a new way to use a familiar plant, and there’s a new Before and After Garden Design Case Study - hurrah!

I also thought that it was about time to reintroduce The Gardening Mind - now, with 40,000 subscribers worldwide, many of you might be wondering what it is and how to find your way round.

First of all, can I say:

If you’re landing here for the first time, a great big WELCOME - it’s great that you’ve found us, at EXACTLY the right time of the gardening year. There’s lots going on here - garden design ideas, easy gardening how-tos, plant recommendations, general garden chat, border planting design tips and tricks and lots more. If you’d like to join in, I’d love it:

Yes please, I'd love to join

PS - if you’re reading this on the App, DO NOT subscribe here - it’s 30% more expensive. Go instead to the website here, click on this same article, and subscribe from there. You can lock in at the same price for life, and save a lot of money in the process.

Well, here we are

I think together we’ve created something rather special here at The Gardening Mind. Five years ago, I planted a tiny seed called The Gardening Mind, and what began as a simple gardening newsletter has grown into a bustling community. I’m incredibly grateful to you.

I genuinely believe that what makes The Gardening Mind special is this community we’ve built together. Every single week, I’m intrigued by the stories you share and am borderline-obsessed with the brilliant way in which members all support each other.

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We continue to share so much. There’s a lot here, so you might just want to skip to Summer Special Part 2, here.

But, if you’re new, have a potter through this:

Generally, when trying to find any article, The Index is your friend:

In it, you’ll find:

• How to design gardens large and small - the Small garden design series is available to start at any time to suit you, and we had the Real Time Garden Design Studio which will be running again this autumn.

• The essential monthly ‘What to do in your garden’ and ‘What NOT to do in your garden’ advice columns - as well as suggestions for your garden, there’s advice and an ongoing Gardener’s Question Time in the Chat.

• How to Garden - practical garden knowhow, including Storecupboard Basics, where we go through the ingredients that all mix together to become GARDENING

• Each month, there’s a gathering-up of rabbit holes in Cultivated: look out for next week’s edition, where, amongst other things which have nothing to do with gardening and everything to do with daftness, there’s a man who folds fitted sheets in a theatrical manner. Yes really.

• Planting recommendations and planting design combinations

• The ‘How to design a border’ course

• How to Garden techniques: everything from composting to how to make leaf mulch to growing amaryllis

• Lessons learned from garden setbacks, including plants I’ll never grow again.

• Garden visits

• News - I announced the publication of The New Romantic Garden right here, and paid members are going to be hearing more about my new book in the next few weeks

• The utter joy of harvesting homegrown vegetables, including the infamous ‘Chittalong’

• Peeking behind the scenes and Zooms about how on earth I was, for example, going to design a garden in China, sharing the ups and downs along the way

• The invaluable wisdom exchanged in our comments section, where experienced gardeners share knowledge with newcomers

• Gardener’s Question Times

• Proper money-can’t-buy explorations, as I visit secret places not open to the public

• Book reviews and giveaways of books, bulbs and tickets to events

• Deep dives into garden colour

• And of course, there’s the regular Sunday Show Us Your Plots.

  QUICK NOTE: Show Us Your Plots - how does it work?

  On Sunday morning you’ll see my post on the Chat which starts ‘It’s Sunday 9th August and it’s time to Show Us Your Plots!’ I post a few photos from my own garden or wherever I’ve been in the preceding days, and then you post yours. I promise you, your photo doesn’t need to be wonderful or edited - honestly, you should see some of mine - it’s basically yellow grass at the moment. It’s just an honest record of what’s going on in our own gardens, or a green spot near wherever we happen to be. Will you come and give it a go this Sunday?

• The Chat also acts as a Gardener’s Question Time through the week and it has taken on a life of its own. So if you have ANY garden-related or plant-related query, come and join us!

Yes please!

I’ll stop here for a moment: if you’re new here, please do have a browse around the Index where you’ll find EVERYTHING.

Garden Design Dilemmas

• I’ve decided it’s about time we looked at another garden design dilemma - we haven’t looked at these for a while, and if you have a tricky garden space or conundrum, the answer might well already be here:

Do you have a space which doesn’t really feel like a garden at all?

An area which wraps around your whole house but that has no sense of whether it’s a front garden or back garden, or anything? No privacy, no personality, just.. well, just a space?

This is exactly what we’re going to be looking at today: how I turned this space into a proper functioning garden:

I’ll be sharing my sketches and plans, and how I dealt with the various constraints, and of course, sharing with you the ‘after’ images too.

• I’ll also be looking at that fabulous drought-resistant, heat-resistant garden superstar I mentioned above. AND, there’s a new way of doing things that I want to tell you about.

• When is a weed not a weed? A controversial use of one very common weed.

• I have discovered the most amazing wasp repeller.

• And a garden oddity which is basically this:

• The Shrub of the Month is back

• And also, I have even more of the very best roses - they are going on and on and on, loving the heat and the drought.

  

• And finally, I have the first new bulb collection, with a discount.

Let’s get going with The Gardening Mind Summer Special Part 2

Here’s what the garden looked like on my first visit:

It’s not really that terrible a space. Lots of us have a patch of grass and some shrubs around the edge, and we leave it like that. But the owners here felt that the whole of this garden was one big amorphous blob: the garden goes all around the house and from wherever they looked, they just saw grass and trees, and not much else. The house itself is a charming and quirky Arts and Crafts house designed and built in the 1920s, and in comparison, the garden felt all sort of nothing-y. It was there, but it wasn’t really doing anything, and it certainly didn’t complement the house.

To underline that there’s nothing really awful here, but what you can’t see is that a couple of brand new houses are about to be built right up by this garden’s boundary - these would create a bit of privacy issue, and were what prompted the owners to get in touch about a garden design.

So where do I start? The brief was to create a garden which would feel ‘right’ in the space, to create privacy, and to create a garden for a busy family to enjoy.

I’m going to show you how I went about it, along with sketches, plans and illustrations, along with the Before and After images:

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First though, if you’re new to The Gardening Mind, welcome. There’s all sorts going on here in this gardening community. We’re number 2 globally in the Home & Garden section, we have members in 177 countries, and we are now in our 5th year - I say WE because this…

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Happy 1st August, and I’m imagining that you might well have had another steamy week. Here, it continues to be hot, the grass is yellow, and we have to be ok with that. The green WILL come back.

And actually, in the areas where the grass has been left to grow long, it actually still looks good - the textures and contrasts in height bring a different kind of colour and interest:

Mealtimes outside have become the norm - omitting the charcoal barbecue for obvious reasons. The other day, I saw a couple cooking some sausages on a disposable barbecue in the park, surrounded by acres of parched grass. Does it not cross their minds that it’s an accident waiting to happen? Harrumph.

If you’re still dealing with a heatwave, please do have a look at these:

I keep thinking that it simply cannot be August when endless January seemed just a minute ago, and I need to find ways of making time go more slowly. It’s bonkers. How was it that when we were at school, six weeks of summer holidays seemed absolutely endless?

Well, we are officially in the new month, and as ever, I’m thinking about What to Do and What Not to Do in your garden this month. The great thing about getting the chance to share this with you in real time here in Substack, is that I can be relevant. Those ‘How to Garden Through the Year’ books are never reliable as how on earth can the author predict a heatwave or the wettest winter ever? Here in The Gardening Mind, on the other hand, we can be agile!

As always in a heatwave, take it slowly. Don’t do too much - there’s a bit of tidying and seed-collecting to be done if you want to, but otherwise, just enjoy being out in the garden or in the shade of a tree while you can. Leave any new planting for when the rains come in the autumn - it’s pointless doing anything like that now whilst the ground is hard and dry.

With that in mind, you’ll have a feel as to whether or not some things should maybe be left a little longer: if your long grass looks ok, leave it until it doesn’t. Pruning: if it continues to be dry in your garden give the trees a bit of a break.

Before I kick off, is your garden in need of an August boost? I’d love to hear if you planted any of these a couple of years ago, and if so, what your thoughts are:

My day lilies were over pretty quickly, and the Japanese anemones have all shrivelled up before getting anywhere near flowering, but the persicaria is doing well.

Right. Let’s get going. As ever, there’s a list of to-dos - these are real to-dos that I’ll actually be doing, rather than what other lists tell us to do. And also as ever, I’ll be going through my not-to-dos. Logical, sensible gardening and shortcuts wherever possible. I’m keeping it short as I know August can be full of stuff and I never, ever want to overwhelm you.

I’m starting off with a summer special - yet again, I am drooling over the hollyhocks that are loving the heat. They don’t like my garden, and so if like me, you just can’t seem to be able to grow hollyhocks - the more brutal the treatment the better, it seems - then you could always give this plant a try - it is LOVING these hot and dry conditions:

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Thank you so much for your amazing reaction to this week’s news - it’s so good to know that many about-to-be students are already members of The Gardening Mind.

Finally, I’m able to tell you the news that I’ve been having to keep quiet for months. And my goodness, has it been a hard one to keep quiet about.

As you know, I love teaching. I started off teaching after university, and it’s something I’ve always been totally passionate about - in fact, I’ve devoted the whole of this Substack to sharing everything I’ve learned about gardening. That’s The Gardening Mind’s mission, and I am so happy that I get the chance to work with you all and hopefully help you in some way along your gardening journey. People say that I’m generous with what I share here, but that’s the whole point of this Substack. What is the point of knowing stuff if you just keep it to yourself?

The Gardening Mind is number 2 in the global Home & Garden charts. Please do come and join us - we have nearly 40k members in 177 countries! That’s 177 countries where there are people who love gardens and gardening! What could be better than a place where you get to chat about gardens and plants to your heart’s content, with others who feel exactly the same way?!

I’ve just finished giving feedback to young designers at RHS Sandringham Flower Show, and this feedback process is supposed to take just a few minutes for each garden. But, if a designer clearly wants to learn and progress, and asks how they can do better next time, I am more than happy to give them all the time in the world. I learned by having great mentors, and I have always been adamant that I want to pass that on.

WELL. Now I get to do that even more.

The news is that I’ve been appointed Head of Garden Design Studies at the London College of Garden Design.

From September 2026, I’ll be leading the Garden Design Diploma whilst still continuing to design gardens for my own clients, and of course, most importantly, writing The Gardening Mind.

It’s an exciting new chapter for the College, strengthening its commitment to having practising professionals running the course - joining me as my Deputy is the most excellent Duncan Cargill, an accomplished garden and landscape designer who is also a very good friend.

It’s a huge honour to be invited to take on this role - the Garden Design Diploma is the College’s flagship professional training programme, combining design theory, practical skills, horticultural knowledge and real-world project experience, and its graduates have gone on to establish amazing careers throughout the garden and landscape design profession. I’ve been a visiting tutor since this College at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew first began, but now I get the chance to work through the year with the new students. The college has been incredibly influential in fostering new design talent over the last twenty years - I know I’d say this, but it really is the best course available and I always head to its graduates when I’m recruiting - and I am really proud to now have the opportunity to support them on a regular basis. Really proud, and super-excited. You know how much I love teaching.

I know just how important good guidance and mentorship is, and together with Duncan, I’m looking forward to being able to work with the next generation of garden designers, helping them to understand how to create gardens by going beyond the textbooks and digging deeper into what makes a truly successful outdoor space.

SO that’s the news. And here in The Gardening Mind, I get to continue to share my love of gardens with you all, sharing and demystifying and teaching. I’ll shortly be announcing the new Garden Design Studio courses that are going to be running for The Gardening Mind members in late autumn and 2027 (I cannot actually believe I just wrote 2027). As ever, these courses are available to paying members, who will get the opportunity to sign up for these very soon.

I'd like to join The Gardening Mind

Life will be even busier (oh and of course there’s that impending house move and a new book on the horizon), and busy is exciting. And for me, ‘exciting’ always leads to new ideas, and new ways of thinking, designing, writing and teaching.

And, believe me, it’s all VERY exciting. Having said I love busy, this week has been off the charts crazy. Sandringham, Cambridge, birthday celebrations, mountains of paperwork and finessing a new book proposal has tested even me. One of the comments in the midweek post asked me to write about how I manage my time and make enough time for everything: the fact is, that something always has to give. Essentially, I’m all or nothing. There’ll be intense periods of hyperfocus and huge productivity where I tune out of everything around me, and then I might seize up and be a total zombie for a day. I’m writing this on a train back from Cambridge where I’ve been looking at dry gardens, and I am DETERMINED to finish this post before I get home. Because from 8pm tonight, I am ON HOLIDAY for the weekend.

When I was putting together my plant list for the Archers’ Garden there were some favourites I really wanted to include to give that abundant, rural summer feel. Roses, of course: Rosa ‘Mary Delany’ got lots of attention as did R. ‘The Lark Ascending’, both David Austin Roses. Which brings me to the saddest of news this week: I’ve been looking at each of my David Austin introductions, saying a quiet thank you to the great man who left us this week.

I want to pay a tribute to one of my heroes. This week, David JC Austin died. They say don’t meet your heroes: well, I met mine and he was the best of people. Passionate about roses and the legacy he had inherited, he was a kind and caring man, with a twinkle of fun in his eyes.

From David Austin Roses:

“It is with great sadness that we announce that David J. C. Austin has died at his Shropshire home, surrounded by his family. He had been diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a rare and incurable neurological condition.

David joined the family business in Albrighton, Shropshire, in 1990, as his father, the late David C. H. Austin, was gaining wider recognition for his work in breeding English Roses. He went on to lead the business for more than three decades, driving its growth and transformation from a specialist nursery into a globally recognised name among rose lovers.

Throughout his leadership, the creation of beautiful, fragrant roses was always central to the business he built.

David’s children, Richard, James and Olivia, said:

“First and foremost, Dad was a gardener. That was at the heart of who he was. He carried our grandfather’s vision with humility and an unwavering sense of responsibility, always putting the roses, the family business and its people before himself. He was kind and modest, with a playful spirit, a sense of adventure and a real enjoyment of life. He faced his illness with the same courage and dignity that he brought to life. Above all, he was our Dad, and words cannot express how much we will miss him. We couldn’t be more proud of him.”

David Austin Roses continues under its experienced leadership team, working closely with the next generation of the Austin family, and we are as committed as ever to serving our partners and rose lovers around the world.”

When I met David Austin junior, he was incredibly welcoming. There was the sense of immense kindness about him, and he conveyed a genuine and absolute delight in meeting people who shared his passion for roses. He had picked up a legacy and carefully carried it through to a new era of spreading the word about roses to a whole new audience who might otherwise have missed the opportunity to enjoy them. A gentle communicator and a quiet rockstar of roses whom I respected enormously.

He had an absolute relish for discussing the different introductions and I felt enormously lucky to be included by him in ways of celebrating the world of David Austin Roses.

I was also lucky enough to visit his own garden at his home, which was a garden full of a true gardener’s joy. I cannot believe the news – I hadn’t known that he was ill: only just a few months ago I was filming in his greenhouse, having been asked to be part of their social media films. I really was honoured to have been picked out by him to do this, and when I first met him, I couldn’t even believe that he knew my name.

Being told by someone whom I’d respected and admired and basically fangirled forever, that they loved how I worked with roses and championed them, doing my best to dispel the myths about them being fussy and high maintenance and somewhat passé, was a pretty high point in my life, I have to tell you, along with being asked to work with them on their handbook in recent years to encourage people to use roses within mixed plantings, creating plant collections which could be easily achieved in their own gardens.

He expressed a gratitude and was LOVELY. There was a quiet, calm determination about him and walking around with him at the David Austin gardens in Albrighton, you could so clearly see how much he was loved by his employees.

The David Austin Roses. handbook was exactly that – so much more than a catalogue, and the way it invited you into its pages made it essential reading from when I first entered the world of garden design. It made the roses accessible, it depicted them as a plant to be enjoyed, and not to be frightened of, and without even hesitating, they were instantly an integral part of every garden I made. There’s a David Austin rose for every garden, and David Austin’s insistence that every rose be a healthy, reliable one meant that customers trusted the judgements.

There was always a sense of moving forward, never being set in a certain way and embracing new ideas. Always championing the rose.

David JC Austin

Chairman, David Austin Roses

1958-2026

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Cutting colour

The Archers Garden was full of plants (you can find the plant list here) which gave intense pops of colour in a blastingly hot and sunny week. Colours really had to fight in the intense, bright light and these were just some of the choices that came through.

Mingled with the big statement plants were smaller, more subtle choices, giving a background wash of colour. One of these was a simple plant, one we probably became familiar with in childhood:

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Finally, I’m able to tell you the news that I’ve been having to keep quiet for months. And my goodness, has it been a hard one to keep quiet about.

As you know, I love teaching. I started off teaching after university, and it’s something I’ve always been totally passionate about - in fact, I’ve devoted the whole of this Substack to sharing everything I’ve learned about gardening. That’s The Gardening Mind’s mission, and I am so happy that I get the chance to work with you all and hopefully help you in some way along your gardening journey. People say that I’m generous with what I share here, but that’s the whole point of this Substack. What is the point of knowing stuff if you just keep it to yourself?

I’ve just finished giving feedback to young designers at RHS Sandringham Flower Show, and this feedback process is supposed to take just a few minutes for each garden. But, if a designer clearly wants to learn and progress, and asks how they can do better next time, I am more than happy to give them all the time in the world. I learned by having great mentors, and I have always been adamant that I want to pass that on.

WELL. Now I get to do that even more.

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Memories of long hot summers always seem sepia-tinted, however long ago they were. Even summers of a few years ago seem as distant as the summers in The Go-Between, The Great Gatsby, Atonement and The Enchanted April.

During those distant faraway summers, there was nothing like the excitement of the summer specials, those fun-filled, jam-packed, chunky editions of your favourite comic which would appear at the local newsagents. Their arrival signalled the end of term and the beginning of the holidays. How much did I look forward to this moment, which meant hours of extra entertainment which you just knew would be good.

Their arrival also signalled the end of term and the beginning of the holidays, and inspired by this joy, there’s a Gardening Mind summer special each year. This year’s was looking HUGE, so I’ve broken it down into two parts - one for this weekend and one coming in August.

So without further ado, happy summer Part 1!

I’m a skimmer when it comes to reading, dotting about and then going back, and I think if I were receiving this article for the first time, I’d probably head straight for The Tiny Garden Design case study. After that, I might have a look at the plant combinations, and only then would I start reading about each plant in detail. I’d love to know, when you see what’s coming up each week, whether you head straight for that item, or do you read the whole thing?

If you’re like me, you might want to head straight to those links. Here’s what’s coming this week, with links to help you jump forward if you’d like to. But you have have to promise me you’ll read the other bits too later!

• Why it works - another tiny garden design

• Five roses that are loving the heatwave right now.

• Planting suggestions for these roses

• I’m also going to show you how I build up a colour palette

• There’s a summer container idea

• A mystery rose is identified

• Discounts on plants and garden stuff

• The first big NEWS of a couple of big bits of news - and there’s some more news coming next week

In case you missed it, here’s this week’s free-to-read Cultivated

And do remember, if you’re buying any of the plants and products below, the Crocus discounts on plants and products are here.

Let’s go!

I have for you a Bumper Edition of the Rose Diaries, as there are five roses that are just loving it hot and dry right now in my own garden. They’ve been neglected and ignored , and they’ve been totally happy in the winter wet, and yet are still wonderful and deserve a proper celebration, along with planting suggestions to make them work either individually or all together.

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FREE TO READ!

You may be new to The Gardening Mind, in which case, thank you ever so much for joining this lovely community, now entering its fifth year here on Substack. It exists purely due to the support of its readers - thank you.

There’s a lot here - have a scroll, check out the home page, join in the Chat…… I hope you enjoy! You will find THE FRIENDLIEST gardening community here, I promise.

Sign me up please

I do spend an awful lot of time rabbit-holing, messing about with plants, doodling and reading about things I don’t have time to be reading about, and I gather these things together under one roof and share them with you every month. So here’s July’s Cultivated, the collection of gathered-together bits and bobs which have caught my eye and lured away my brain this month.

It’s free to read and I hope that, if you’re new here, you enjoy dipping in and out of it.

In case you missed it…

I thought it might be helpful to gather in one place a list of what’s been happening here in The Gardening Mind over the last few weeks:

• Most importantly, I launched The Index - where you can find EVERYTHING

• A beautiful and tricky rose for a healthy spot

• Plants that I’ve lost my patience with, and plants that have never let me down - the original…

• One of the most fabulous, magical roses

• How to choose plants for a hot, dry place

• Chaos gardening

• How to garden when it’s hot

• How to garden in July

• A tough, drought-loving perennial that pollinators can’t resist

• Debunking garden snobbery and defending ‘bad taste’

• Badminton Flower Show preview

• Badminton - how to create the cottage look

The Garden Design Studio

We’ve just finished this course, and I am going to be launching a Planting Design Studio in January, with details announced in September. If anyone would like to join another Garden Design Studio, please do email me, with the subject STUDIO - if there’s enough interest, I’ll run this course in October-November.

What I’ve been noticing in the garden

It’s dry out there, and it’s HOT. I’ve been noticing how ALL of my plants have been coping well with the conditions without being watered - only a few of the pots get watered every morning; the more drought-tolerant containers get watered once a week.

Look at Rosa ‘Emma Bridgewater’ above. She’s absolutely as happy as anything in the heat, standing proudly with nary a wilt in sight. (I don’t think I’ve ever written or even said ‘nary’ before - I think I like it). Looking gorgeous with the self-seeded cornflowers and Sanguisorba ‘Lilac Squirrel’, she’s the best-performing rose in my garden at the moment.

I combined her here below with summer berry pudding colours:

You can find the plants listed here.

If you’re looking for other roses to work with her, try shades of these:

Remember Jessie Buckley’s Oscars dress which I wrote about back in March? Well, the sumptuousness of the colours reminded me of these roses:

This week, put together this lovely combination - I love to see pinks and reds - all the forest fruit shades bring total joy. As I’m thinking about my own new garden (there’ll be more coming on this subject, if and when we exchange contracts - in the meantime I keep waking up in the middle of the night thinking what on earth am I doing moving from my perfect house and lovely garden, to a wreck of both a house and garden).

R. ‘Emma Bridgewater’ will be appearing in The Rose Diaries this weekend, along with some other heat-lovers, including this gem:

I have actually mentioned this rose in passing before; I’m wondering if any eagle-eyed Gardening Minds might just remember her….?

Sign me up please

I first used R. ‘Emma Bridgewater’ in The Glasshouse Garden at Chelsea ( wrote an extraordinary piece about it here). In May this year I went visit it in its forever home at HMP Downview: you can see more images here:

I cannot tell you how moving it was to see this garden under new ‘ownership’. Women who have never had a chance to garden in their lives, let alone any access to green space in custody, are now tending and nurturing this space, keeping a stern eye out for litter and weeds. One woman has drawn illustrations of garden birds and pinned them up inside the pavilion, so that her peers might learn to recognise them. Another, a Reiki practitioner, was giving a boost to the garden, her hands just above the soil.

A Heatwave Collection

I’ve brought together my gardening articles that might be useful over this long, dry summer:

And of course, no Heatwave Special is complete without this by ’s son all those years ago. THE BEST:

At RHS Badminton Flower Show last week, I came across this company with the very best dresses for heatwaves, in the thinnest of cotton and in the prettiest range of floral prints - and gorgeous pyjamas too. Look at these:

There’s also a long and short nightie in the same print

I can’t stop looking: how about these:

This shade is beautiful - you could camouflage yourself in amongst the wisteria:

I saw lots of people using umbrellas as parasols. I do think we should bring back the parasol, but a boring black foldy-up umbrella just doesn’t cut it, somehow. However, Rosehip do umbrellas too - this would make an excellent parasol:

And they do shower caps - this would jolly up morning ablutions no end:

My own dress was from Penelope Chilvers - I’m a big fan of this style.

I loathe a waistband and so when I spotted this linen dress on their stand at Chelsea, I pounced on it. The linen is incredibly cool in hot weather, but works with a cardigan and boots too. It’s been worn in the garden, to a wedding and to the pub. Versatile.

Hanging baskets in the wild

I’m still on that mission to bring back hanging baskets - along with parasols. Look at this excellent front doorway, sent in by one of our very own Gardening Minds. This belongs to her and I think it is brilliant. Let’s do it:

I know they need watering, but think of the bathwater video above and do that. If you spot a hanging basket, please do take a snap and add it to the Chat!

The dahlias are FINALLY coming:

The palette I went for this year is much softer - I love the bold tutti-fruitiness of dahlia display, but I wanted a bit of a change, and these colours seem to be working well in the general straw-like appearance of the garden. There’s something almost dried-out about the shades, I think.

Books

I was surprised to see that there’s a new Little House on the Prairie coming out - but the original was so perfect!! is excellent on the subject here.

and are totally responsible for this summer holiday pile by my bed.

Having ordered them I then remembered that I’m not actually going on a summer holiday, so it made me need to book a January one instead. I cannot wait to enter into that One Book A Day heaven.

Great ideas in both these:

Books + Bits

Everything I've read in 2026 so far

I planned to publish a letter today about sorting through my books proofs - six untenable piles stacked around and immediately outside my bedroom for my husband to trip over - putting them onto shelv…

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2 months ago · 163 likes · 60 comments · Pandora Sykes

Book(ish)

Summer Books 2026: The books of summer

“Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”- Henry James…

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2 months ago · 62 likes · 7 comments · Natasha Poliszczuk

Also, is running a Couch to 5k of reading. How fab is that? That’s my kind of exercise.

Some bits and bobs

I loved this from - how to make guests feel comfortable.

It reminded me of when I was lucky enough to stay at the most amazing house years ago, when the bed was so high I needed a mounting block to get into it:

Anyway, the VERY best thing was that there was a tin of biscuits on the bedside table:

Rich Tea, no less! If you’ve listened to my Rich Pickings podcast, you’ll know they are my absolute favourite. The very Best of British Biscuits.

’s illustrations really do brighten up the day:

And I’m intrigued by this constantly-growing tiny world created by :

I loved on Arthur Fery. What a lovely boy indeed.

I also am OBSESSED with this. I need to see it IRL:

Did I get to this next link via ? I think so - but thank you anyway, Alex, as your Pigeon Post Joy Parade is a thing of joy every week. I save it till last on a Saturday, a real pudding of cheer to finish off the Substacks:

Thinking about holidays, I really want one of these:

And this made me cry: a group of Italian ‘youth’ serenading a lady in her flat , with an Italian classic:

On Italy, I am allowed to say, being half-Italian and with a lot of hair-raising experiences whilst in cars/taxis/buses there, that many Italian drivers do actually drive like this:

Back to gardens

asked me to cheer for the Maximalist side of gardening in Elle Decor this month. I can’t think why

Look out for this rose, coming in this weekend’s article. If you’re in Italy/France, or you’ve got a warm wall, this one is for you.

Off to walk the dog now before it starts getting steamy again. Keep cool, friends.

This has been a free-to-read post: I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Thank you for all those heart-shaped likes that you’ve been leaving, and I’ll be back, properly, at the weekend.

I'd love to join in

PHEW. Building a garden in a heatwave is no easy task, especially when your main nursery supplier sends you some pretty dire plants and you have to spend three days driving round the Cotswolds looking for a couple of hundred show-quality specimens. But we did it!

And also, the Cotswolds are a pretty lovely place to have to drive around. So no complaints here.

There were LOTS of opinions on last weekend’s Debunking Garden Snobbery article, and I can’t tell you how happy it made me that so many of you are cheerleaders for hanging baskets. As I drove around the prettiest of villages, it was so cheering to see doorways brightened up by joyful pots of colour at height.

I think all of us at The Gardening Mind should start a campaign to Make Hanging Baskets Great Again - are you with me?

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I also discovered at Badminton that I really, really, REALLY like goats.

I spent quite a lot of time watching Peanut and Percy munch away at the edges of the garden and feeding them daisies. Talk about mindful. If you’ve had a stressful day, I can highly recommend visiting a miniature goat and giving it a blade of grass - it will be highly appreciative and will make a really sweet satisfied face when it’s chewing:

I arrived back home at the end of the week to find this rose in full flower, FINALLY. The blooms are crimped, cupped, gently squashed as if someone decided to make rose-flower pastry. It’s a crinkled gardenia of a rose. And if you stick in your nose and breathe in deeply, you’ll be hit by a strong, sweet, fruity perfume, with hints of pineapple. It’s a rose that smells like summer. You have to have it - it’s worth the wait. It featured in The Rose Diaries here.

Look out for two lots of exciting news heading your way. The first is coming in a week or so, and then The Really Big News will be announced on 28th July. I know I always talk about exciting news - this is something very exciting, both in terms of career and in terms of what this Substack has led to. I absolutely can’t wait - if you’re a paid member, look out for it!

It’s the last week of the Garden Design Studio, and after chats with members who have taken part in this, I am really happy to announce that I’ll be running a Planting Design Course starting in January. This planting design course will run along similar lines to the Design Studio, with 8 online sessions. I’ll be sending details in the autumn to all paid members, and in the meantime I’d love to know if anyone else would be interested in this

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GDS graduates, you’ve given some amazing feedback, and I’m so excited to see that you’re carrying on meeting up independently. If you’d like to let readers know what you thought of the course, please feel free to add some notes here?

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By the way, have you noticed recently that blooms on your plants are much smaller than usual? Look at this photo - I should have put a hand in the photo for scale, but the flowers on Rosa ‘Bengal Crimson’ are teeny tiny:

Have you had this in your garden?

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Here‘s the same plant ‘normally’:

Basically this phenomenon is because of the heatwave. The heat slows down cell division in the developing petals, so the cells that would normally pump a flower into full size, are now on strike and are not making as many of themselves. The plant is in survival mode, it needs to produce flowers to reproduce, and time is of the essence.

It’s also desperate to keep hydrated, so it redirects its energy away from flowering and towards keeping its roots going. And heat speeds everything up too: buds open more quickly, and flowers go over more quickly. Honestly, the whole cycle feels like it’s on fast-forward at the moment. It’s a race to the finish and it’s only July.

But: DON’T PANIC. This is precisely what plants do to survive. Think about how we ourselves are going about life at the moment, and what I advised here in How to garden in a Heatwave - plants are pretty much doing the same thing. They’re putting on their lightest dresses, walking slowly, eating lightly and keeping on carrying on. As soon as we get a break in the weather, the big blooms will be back.

I hid all sorts of little details throughout the The Archers show garden, each one a nod to a storyline or a character. Set in the aftermath of the recent sewage-spill saga, I wanted the space to feel hopeful: a front garden lovingly rebuilt and replanted.

By the back door sits a row of wellies in assorted sizes and colours, belonging to Tony and Pat and their grandchildren, Henry and Jack. Enamel bowls of strawberries and jars of jpreserves are a nod to Pat’s jam-making, and there are packets of sweet peas dotted about too, referencing the episodes where Tony shared his seeds with the whole village to mark his 75th birthday.

Round the corner, there’s a little cheesemaking area: milk bottles and specially-designed wrappers for Borsetshire Blue and Sterling Gold, two of Helen’s award-winning cheeses.

And then there are the vehicles: a full-sized vintage Fordson Major, with a toy MG Midget and a miniature Fordson Major alongside it, all nods to the cars and tractors Tony has owned over the years, and to the current storyline where Tony dug up a toy tractor belonging to his late son John.

And there’s more, all captured for you so that you can hunt for the Easter Eggs. There were plenty in the noticeboard:

Planting combinations and how to achieve this cottage garden look

Today, we’re going on a tour around the garden, taking a look at the planting combinations and how to achieve this cottage garden look. It isn’t about just shoving it all in - believe it or not, there’s method to the ‘chaos’. By the way, if you’re interested in cottage garden design and want to follow up in more detail, have a look at the Cottage Garden Design course here.

Let’s start with the essence of a cottage garden: that feeling that it’s all just happened. That the plants have tumbled in of their own accord and self-seeded where they felt like it. And importantly, the feeling that no designer was ever involved. I never want a garden that I’ve designed to feel that it’s been designed.

Remember how Les Dawson played the piano badly? You actually have to be a good pianist to play that badly, and he was. The same goes for this cottage garden look: there are a lot of decisions involved and nothing here is accidental, but I’m wanting it to feel like it is.

Let’s look at the whole scene first:

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Hello! It’s the eve of the RHS Badminton Flower Show and I’m sending this from a very hot and very gorgeous showground at the Badminton Estate. There are still tickets available and I can’t begin to say how lovely the show is - some amazing gardens and some FABULOUS stalls with lots of plants and all things garden-related to buy. Tickets are available here.

It’s been a wonderful week, started off by the news that as well as being no.2 in the global Home & Garden section, The Gardening Mind is no. 48 out of ALL the Substacks in the UK, which is phenomenal news. We are up there with all the news, finance and techie huge newsletters. And the reason why we’re up there? It’s because of YOU. You make it happen. And some of you have even volunteered to help plant this show garden - how amazing is that? A true Substack involvement. THANK YOU.

I’ve been planning this garden for months now, and it was just brilliant to be able to share it with Adam Frost as we filmed this morning - you’ll be able to see it on this Friday’s BBC Gardener’s World. Here are some preview glimpses as a thank you for all your support - can you spot any story-related items?

And I had a very special visitor who refused to budge:

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I’m here at Badminton and we have the most wonderful team - including Gardening Mind volunteers! - who are helping to create this garden. Substack, you’re now helping create an RHS Flower Show garden!! (Warning: there are A LOT of exclamation marks in this article as I’m just so excited. Remember when we were told not to use them as it made you sound too happy and enthusiastic? Well, I AM happy!! So I will exclaim away!!!)

It’s been an exciting week - I’ve been up at Old Broadcasting House recording the Archers Podcast with Emma Freud, along with guests Liz Earle and Louise Patikas - Helen Archer herself! In the flesh!!

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I’m currently sitting under a chestnut tree writing this to you, and I cannot wait to share the finished garden with you. Three more days of planting to go, and we’re getting there. The team have been busy planting thousands of plants in rock-hard ground, performing acrobatic stunts as they create the edible forest, the swale, the veg production area, and lots more. Tomorrow, the roses arrive! Hurrahh!!!

If you’re landing here at The Gardening Mind for the first time, welcome - I’m delighted you’ve found us. There’s lots going on here - garden design ideas, easy gardening how-tos, plant recommendations, general garden chat, border planting design tips and tricks, zoom get-togethers and lots more. If you’d like to join in, I’d absolutely love it.

If you’re wondering what we’re all about here, have a look at this. Also, please do head to the Home Page on your browser. There you’ll find over four years’ worth of design articles, plant profiles, garden challenges, short courses, tutorials, and lots and lots more.

And of course, there’s The Index - unique to us and really helpful for finding your way through all the posts.

If you haven’t quite decided what style of garden you like, or want, but you want to do something to your garden, there are lots of previous posts to read through which I think you’ll find helpful. There’s the Small Garden Design course to follow, Garden Design Case Studies and Garden Dilemmas. There are sections on City Gardens, Planting Design, Country Gardens, and Wildlife Gardening. You’ll find lots of ‘before and after’ examples, too, which I’m hoping will help show you what’s possible.

I'd like to join please

And here’s what I’d love to know: are you someone who has never gardened before but who is tempted? I would be just so happy if you decided to join us: we’ve had so many complete beginners join us over the last few years, and those beginners have over time sown their first seed, harvested their first salad leaves, and are here now forming this community of garden lovers. I want you to feel confident enough to have a go, maybe even to ask questions, and to feel that amazing feeling you get when you go outside and see your very first seedling poking its way curiously out of the soil. There isn’t anything quite like it.

I’m always a fan of the underdog - tell me that hydrangeas are old-fashioned (I kid you not, I was told this at garden design college when everyone was falling over themselves in raptures at the ornamental grasses so beloved of the late 90s), and I will defend them to the end.

All this, and a comment about fuchsias along with a begonia-adorned alleyway, made me think that there’s something we need to challenge. A few weeks ago I wrote about gardening myths, and it was fascinating to see how different things got under different people’s skins, and I realised that an awful lot of what passes for ‘good taste’ in gardening is often just about fashion, often designed to make you reject the cheap and cheerful reliable thing and buy the expensive one instead.

So this week I’m doing the opposite of the myths post - I’m setting out to stand up for things that the design snobs have told us we should reject or that we should be embarrassed about.

The fact is, I want a garden to look as if someone loves it. Ironically, I don’t want it to look designed; it just needs to look as if someone cares. If you think about it, nature has no taste and yet it has all the taste. A wildflower meadow breaks every rule in the book with clashing colours, has little or no structure, and yet it’s the most beautiful thing ever.

Hands up if you’ve got a ‘tacky’ garden thing you secretly adore. It may well be on my list, and I’m jolly well going to stand up for it.

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Debunking garden snobbisms

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I’m off to do something very exciting - more about this on Saturday, but before leaving, I’ve done my usual 6am prowl around the garden to see what’s going on, and I couldn’t set off without telling you about this beauty which is currently in seventh heaven here.

None of the plants in my garden get any water, apart from some in pots. This plant, though, thrives on neglect - it’s put up with the wettest of winters, and now it’s putting up with the hottest of summers.

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If you’re landing here at The Gardening Mind for the first time, welcome - I’m delighted you’ve found us. There’s lots going on here - garden design ideas, easy gardening how-tos, plant recommendations, general garden chat, border planting design tips and tricks, zoom get-togethers and lots more. If you’d like to join in, I’d absolutely love it.

If you’re wondering what we’re all about here, have a look at this. Also, please do head to the Home Page on your browser. There you’ll find over four years’ worth of design articles, plant profiles, garden challenges, short courses, tutorials, and lots and lots more.

And of course, there’s The Index - unique to us and really hel!pful for finding your way through all the posts.

If you haven’t quite decided what style of garden you like, or want, but you want to do something to your garden, there are lots of previous posts to read through which I think you’ll find helpful. There’s the Small Garden Design course to follow, Garden Design Case Studies and Garden Dilemmas. There are sections on City Gardens, Planting Design, Country Gardens, and Wildlife Gardening. You’ll find lots of ‘before and after’ examples, too, which I’m hoping will help show you what’s possible.

I'd like to join please

And here’s what I’d love to know: are you someone who has never gardened before but who is tempted? I would be just so happy if you decided to join us: we’ve had so many complete beginners join us over the last few years, and those beginners have over time sown their first seed, harvested their first salad leaves, and are here now forming this community of garden lovers. I want you to feel confident enough to have a go, maybe even to ask questions, and to feel that amazing feeling you get when you go outside and see your very first seedling poking its way curiously out of the soil. There isn’t anything quite like it.

We’ve started The Archers 75th Anniversary garden! Here are Days 1 and 2 of what is proving to be a very hot build - wish us luck!

Do come and visit the garden at the RHS Badminton Flower Show - I can’t wait to show Gardening Mind members around and introduce to my reimagining of Bridge Farm.

I’m writing this on a BOILING train, having arrived back in the UK and heading straight from the airport to a friend’s birthday weekend in Yorkshire, so thank you for the virtual company - and there are a couple more Rome postcards below.

• I’ve already given my heatwave planting tips and general survival tips here, and today here are my tips and tricks for gardening in July. But when it’s cooler - NOT RIGHT NOW.

• The Rose Diaries are back again, with a candy-striped stunner.

• There’s another gorgeous planting combination.

• And there’s an offer - do remember to head here for your discount codes if you’re purchasing anything for the garden.

If you’re new here, please do look out for the Chat on Sundays, where Gardening Mind members catch up and share photos, and news, in Show Us Your Plots. It’s a lot of fun so do come and join in - you’ll find a very warm welcome there.

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It’s a hot one, and I’m one of those annoying people who love the heat. I soak it up and it’s the best sensation. But I do manage it Italian-style: I walk slowly when I’m out, I don’t go out between 12-4pm, and I definitely don’t garden beyond 8am and until 8pm. I wear ‘house dresses’ intended for grannies, bought from Italian street markets (I mean the proper actual markets selling vegetables and saucepans and mosquito zappers, not the markets selling pretty bits and bobs).

I’m in Rome this week and here’s my view from a terrace I worked on a few years ago:

You’ll find some more Rome terraces below, along with the most excellent garden accessory spotted yesterday:

If you’re landing here at The Gardening Mind for the first time, welcome - I’m delighted you’ve found us. There’s lots going on here - garden design ideas, easy gardening how-tos, plant recommendations, general garden chat, border planting design tips and tricks, zoom get-togethers and lots more. If you’d like to join in, I’d absolutely love it.

If you’re wondering what we’re all about here, have a look at this. Also, please do head to the Home Page on your browser. There you’ll find over four years’ worth of design articles, plant profiles, garden challenges, short courses, tutorials, and lots and lots more.

And of course, there’s The Index - unique to us and really hel!pful for finding your way through all the posts.

If you haven’t quite decided what style of garden you like, or want, but you want to do something to your garden, there are lots of previous posts to read through which I think you’ll find helpful. There’s the Small Garden Design course to follow, Garden Design Case Studies and Garden Dilemmas. There are sections on City Gardens, Planting Design, Country Gardens, and Wildlife Gardening. You’ll find lots of ‘before and after’ examples, too, which I’m hoping will help show you what’s possible.

I'd like to join please

And here’s what I’d love to know: are you someone who has never gardened before but who is tempted? I would be just so happy if you decided to join us: we’ve had so many complete beginners join us over the last few years, and those beginners have over time sown their first seed, harvested their first salad leaves, and are here now forming this community of garden lovers. I want you to feel confident enough to have a go, maybe even to ask questions, and to feel that amazing feeling you get when you go outside and see your very first seedling poking its way curiously out of the soil. There isn’t anything quite like it.

But first, the heat. How are you doing? As above, basically don’t do too much in the garden, and if you do go out there, make sure it’s early or late. Not in the day. Sit in the shade and try to enjoy the roses who are absolutely loving it:

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Well, it’s the eve of the Summer Solstice - the longest day and the lightest evening of the year, when the garden is at its absolute approaching-Midsummer peak and anything magical might happen, which feels kind of appropriate as I’ve been thinking about chaos, surprises, and letting a garden do its own thing. I realise that there’s only just over a week to go before we start building The Archers show garden at RHS Badminton Flower Show, and to keep the goats in is still taking up a lot of my brain space.

A quick update on The Garden Design Studio: we’re nearing the end of our odyssey through garden design, and I am astounded at where participants have got to. Seriously. Everyone’s designs are looking excitingly good, just right for their intended place, and most importantly, viable. There are courtyard gardens, gardens in Scotland and the US, town gardens, country gardens and gardens in between and I cannot wait to see how they develop in real life. Do look out for updates on The Chat, every Sunday (and also through the rest of the week).

• Chaos Gardening, what even is it, and do you indulge?

• Self-seeders and free plants! (Just caught the typo which initially said ‘free pants’. Which would have been interesting too).

• Hot and dry gardens and making a gravel garden.

• How to start your own plant collection even when you don’t have acres.(Yes, really).

What actually is Chaos Gardening?

I was interviewed this week by American Vogue about ‘Chaos Gardening’. I think I’d always assumed it meant something else: being a bit late to plant the tulip bulbs and do the pruning and so on, which is very definitely my kind of gardening.

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I love a stripy rose, don’t you? All the raspberry ripple shades, colours of summer berry puddings all swirled and mirled together to create an absolute pavlova of a rose. Bicoloured roses - for that’s the official name for these stripy delights - are enjoying a renaissance in popularity, and I’m delighted about it.

However, it will need to wait till next week as it was beaten by this contender:

David Austin Roses have created magic with this rose. She was almost glowing pink this morning and I swear the colours basically lured me outside to try to capture the tones. She wins.

If you’re new here, do check out The Index, where you’ll find anything and everything to do with gardens that I’ve written over the last five years

Also, there’s a new Perks button, where you can find the plants and products discount. Do use it if you’re ordering the plants below.

One of the easiest roses to grow and brilliant in terms of both colour and structure (I often use her in tiny gardens when there’s no room for a small tree), her name,

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