GARDENING

MEDITERRANEAN MAGIC: a simple water feature, Greek-style urn, pebbled paths and a blaze of colour from petunias in anAli Baba terracotta pot

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CHECKLIST

FLOWERS: Propagate your best fuchsias. From healthy, pest-free plants take cuttings 7cm-10cm (3in-4in) long, ideally from the tips of shoots that have flowered lower down. Cut halfway between two pairs of leaves and pinch out the shoot’s tip, leaving one pair of leaves. Insert the cuttings one to each 7.5cm (3in) pot of gritty compost and place them in a light position out of direct sunlight. Cover the pot with a glass jar or clear plastic bag. SHRUBSAND TREES: Deadhead roses, pruning back to an outward-facing leaf-joint. Spray where aphids or the fungal diseases blackspot or mildew are prevalent. Clip hedges and topiary, removing all new growth unless it is needed to fill gaps or add height. LAWNS: Raise the mower blades – grass can take weeks to recover if sheared too short in hot weather. PONDS: Remove blanketweed and excess duckweed, and pull off the dying leaves of water plants. When the water level falls due to dry weather, top up the pool by trickling water on to the surface (to discourage algae and provide fish with oxygen) but not near water lilies. VEGETABLES: Pick courgettes and runner beans as soon as they are big enough. The more you pick, the more the plants will produce. By mid-August, sow spring cabbages and finish planting leeks for cropping early next year. FRUIT:Apples producing a small crop will benefit from summer pruning. Shorten all mature side shoots – the dark, woody ones –to within three leaves of the base. This year’s shoots, lighter in colour and more supple, should be cut back to one leaf. HERBS: Sow parsley for a late autumn crop. Take cuttings of shrubby herbs such as sage, rosemary, thyme and santolina (cotton lavender). GLASS: To avoid blossom-end rot in tomatoes, continue to water plants regularly and evenly, and to feed every few days. Remove lower leaves as they start to turn yellow. HOUSEPLANTS: They need extra water through summer but don’t water until the compost starts to dry out. Give a weekly liquid feed to those that are due to flower in autumn or winter.

IF YOU can’t head for the Med this year, then have a go at creating your own Riviera at home.

The ingredients are fewer than you might think – a summery surface underfoot, pots that look the part, the sound of water, and palm tree lookalikes.

Even small backyards can be transformed. Impress by changing colours and textures where necessary.

Large paving slabs in an irregular pattern suggest a more leisurely life and the view can be varied to conjure that lazy Med mood by removing a few and planting herbs in the spaces, in soil topped with small stones.

Pebbles or pea-gravel evoke a beach, especially if a few rocks can be added.

Bare soil should be covered with a plastic membrane first to suppress weeds. The pebbles can be planted through with ground-hugging herbage.

Thymes are ideal because they tolerate being trodden on occasionally – when they release their spicy scent – and produce appealing pink or purple summer flowers that bees and butterflies love. If your boundaries are walls of red brick, fine. If not, paint them warm orange or red. In either case, fix a trellis or wires in front and clothe the wall with exotic climbers such as jasmine, passion flower and a fig tree pruned into a fan shape.

Containers play a dual role. The materials they are made of and their shapes can add atmosphere to the scene. Then they are a major stage for flowers and foliage. Terracotta could have been invented to give gardens a glow.

Acollection of pots mixed with vivid flowers can make an eye-stopping feature. For exotic shape choose Cretan jars, Greek-style urns and Ali Baba pots, and pots decorated with garlands or grapes.

Asmall water feature, perhaps combined with statuary, is all that is needed to add the sound of splashing or trickling, perhaps from the mouth of a wall-mounted figure or animal or bubbling up from a sunken pebble pool.

One or two spiky, palm-like plants add essential character. Cordyline australis comes from New Zealand but does a passable impression of a palm, growing quickly as long as the soil is welldrained and reaching 6m-8m (20ft-25ft) after a few years.

Young specimens can be grown in pots for the first two or three years to make them more prominent. The New Zealand flax, phormium, looks similar but remains a shrub – a very effective one in yellow, green or bronze – and the hardy Yucca filamentosa from the US makes a large spiky shrub and produces huge panicles of white, bell-shaped flowers from mid-summer.

Hot-coloured annual flowers conjure up the Med – petunias, pelargoniums (often wrongly-called geraniums) and any with a sub-tropical character, like portulacas, brilliant-leaved coleus, or, for perennial displays, the sun-loving daisy flowers of osteospermums or gazanias.