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Things to Do JULY

Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks

Prune CONIFER HEDGES Keep hedging neat and tidy with a midsummer maintenance prune – it’s also a good time of year to shape and form young hedging plants

After a month or two of vigorous growth, the lines of conifer hedges can become shaggy. Midsummer is the ideal time to trim them to keep them looking sharp and at the right size. That said, shaggy yews were spotted in several Chelsea show gardens in 2019, so perhaps fl u y hedges could be the next big thing.

Some fast-growing conifers, such as the notorious Leyland cypress (x Cuprocyparis leylandii) and Lawson cypress (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana), may need two or three trims over the course of the growing season to keep them tidy and within their bounds. Yew isn’t quite as vigorous, and should be fi ne with one summer prune, followed by another in autumn to give a crisp winter outline.

Spread a sheet on the ground below the hedge to make it easier to tidy up the clippings afterwards, and then set to work with hand shears or a powered hedge trimmer. Use wide, sweeping movements with the trimmer, keeping the blade parallel to the hedge and working from the bottom up (left). Aim for the bottom to be wider than the top and make sure the top is level by stretching string across it rather than trying to do it by eye.

On young hedges, encourage plants to bush out by regularly trimming back side branches so you begin to create a shape that tapers towards the top (above). Stop the leading shoot when it reaches the height you want the hedge to be.

Checklist

O Deadhead roses carefully to make the plant neater and to encourage more fl owers. Snip each fl owering stem back by up to three leaves.

O Plant autumnfl owering bulbs such as autumn crocus, colchicums and nerines in a warm, sunny spot in the garden.

O Water vegetables regularly in the evening. An e ective, time-saving method is to lay a length of perforated hose along the rows. This minimises evaporation and keeps foliage dry.

O Harvest shallots, onions and garlic by lifting them from the soil and leaving them to dry out and ripen.

O Take cuttings of woody herbs like rosemary and sage. They’ll root within four to six weeks when you can pot them up

PASSION & Precision

Cheerful Rudbeckia hirta ‘Marmalade’ contrasts with dusky pink Hylotelephium telephium subsp. fabaria var. borderei

M E A D O W F A R M GARDEN

There aren’t many couples like Rob and Diane Cole, who can claim to be completely equal partners when it comes to decision making in the garden. They met by chance on a beach in Majorca in 1986 and realised they were a match made in horticultural heaven. A by-product of their relationship has been the creation of one of the most immaculate gardens you’ll ever have the pleasure to visit: Meadow Farm Garden in Worcestershire.

The Coles’ one-acre garden, which is part of a larger three-acre site, is not the result of a series of happy accidents; it has been meticulously planned to the point where even the lawns are designed as parallel curves at a width that lets Rob create the perfect stripes with his mower. Rob, a retired architect and landscape architect, planned the sloping westfacing garden using a CAD software package, but he is quick to point out that it was Diane who was responsible for laying the paving.

From the moment you turn into the drive you know you’ve entered a plantsman’s

Above The dimensions of these sweeping borders are based on those at Cheshire’s Arley Hall. Below Perfect partners: Meadow Farm Garden’s Rob and Diane Cole.

paradise. To the left is the couple’s nursery and meadow, and to the right is their garden. “We bought the property in 1998, having moved from a small garden in Birmingham, and by 1999 we were ready to open as a nursery and garden specialising in hardy perennials,” explains Rob. “Our dream had always been to find somewhere to create a garden and start a nursery, since we’d grown out of our small town garden and filled five allotments with plants!”

The one-and-a-quarter acre meadow that lies beyond the nursery is something of which both Diane and Rob are justifiably proud. “It is managed as a nature reserve and in August we can expect to see a wonderful array of butterflies. Skipper, common blue, brimstone and rare brown hairstreak butterflies are all regular visitors,” Rob notes. “By early September, if the weather’s been dry, the meadow has been cut,” adds Diane.

The activity in the nursery has been reduced in recent years and the Coles now attend only a few plant fairs each year. “We are hoping to have more time for the garden

and garden-themed holidays,” explains Rob. Even so, there are still rows and rows of echinacea on display at the nursery. Rob has spent many years researching and breeding these plants, and August is when they reach their peak.

With so much interest in their garden, it’s hard to choose a route to walk. Each grass path oers a tempting view of the surrounding countryside and glimpses of extraordinary plant combinations. Although this is a windy site, thanks to Diane’s work earlier in the summer the plants are rarely propped up by plant supports in August. “I only support plants as and when they need it. I find that doing a Chelsea chop and then pinching out results in plants being more compact,” she explains. “Having read The Well-Tended Perennial Garden by Tracy DiSabato-Aust, I’ve become a fan of cutting back perennials such as phlox, eupatorium and leucanthemum to keep them compact.”

The August garden is vibrant and awash with texture, colour and perfume. The Latin name of each and every plant is quickly reeled o by Rob and Diane. “Ever since we started planting this garden, which was a field before we arrived, we’ve kept a

Clockwise from top left

Weathered stone faces; Rob’s fastidiously neat lawn stripes; the dark outline of Sambucus nigra f. porphyrophylla ‘Black Tower’ looms over goldenrod, lythrum, and a mound of rudbeckia; corrugated purple petals of Clematis x durandii.

computer database of all the plants we’ve bought,” says Rob. Their database of thousands of plants records the nursery from which they were bought, the price paid, their location in the garden and the Latin name. They even keep records of plants that fail in their heavy clay soil. This is organisation as you’ve never seen it before. Although they are very organised the couple don’t plan their plant combinations out on paper. Diane has a talent for finding just the right spot in the border for her new perennials and shrubs. “I will move things if I’m not happy with the look,” she admits.

SOWING HOMEGROWN SEED By Rob Cole

O Harvest seed from the garden when it’s fully ripe on a dry day. All the seed we collect is stored in paper envelopes and then kept in a north-facing room in the house.

O The seed collected is sown between October and March and none of it is kept in a heated propagator or greenhouse. We sow it in small pots or trays covered with fi ne horticultural grit and leave it outside to face the elements.

O When sowing so many di erent types of seed, this ‘one size fi ts all’ sowing technique is defi nitely the easiest solution.

O We are both members of The Alpine Garden Society, The Hardy Plant Society, Plant Heritage and our local gardening club, so we have plenty of opportunity to swap seeds and seedlings with other gardeners.

“A favourite plant in August is Dahlia ‘Karma Choc’ thanks to its dark foliage and velvety maroon fl owers. We tend to leave our dahlias in the ground all year here,” says Diane. “Another plant that works well on the exposed slope is the compact Crocosmia ‘Bressingham Blaze’.”

As you head down the slope you will pass through a series of small gardens – the Silver Garden, the Summer House Garden and the Yew Courtyard. On reaching the bottom of the hill you’ll fi nd an inviting bench. Sit here and look out towards Berrow Hill. Your view is framed by a large metal hoop that’s set in the border and you will not be surprised to learn that this organised couple have positioned it precisely so that the oak tree in the distant fi eld sits right in the centre of its frame.

Your journey then takes you over a small stream that Rob and Diane discovered by accident. “The stream was originally running through a pipe that we inadvertently broke while creating the garden – we thought for a moment that we’d hit a mains water pipe!” Rob explains. “We decided to remove the pipe and let the stream run free over cobbles. It now travels through a bed that is covered with a pond liner and fi lled with bog plants.”

At the far right of the garden, just over the stream, are two herbaceous borders with a central grass Top Stipa gigantea and Monarda ‘Raspberry Wine’ edge a pathway. Middle Crocosmia ‘Walberton Yellow’. Bottom An eye-popping high-summer patchwork includes magenta Phlox ‘Goldmine’ and cobaltblue agapanthus.

Meadow Farm PLANTS Rich colours and textures on stand-out plants that heighten the late-summer display

DAHLIA ‘KARMA CHOC’

Black stems and dark foliage with velvety flowers that look as good in the vase as in borders.

KNIPHOFIA ‘TAWNY KING’

A stunner for the centre of a south-facing display, with spikes of apricot and cream.

PERSICARIA ‘ORANGE FIELD’

Diane loves elegant persicarias. They thrive in sun or part shade from July through to October.

EUCOMIS COMOSA ‘OAKHURST’

A dark-leaved pineapple lily with pink flowers on a fleshy stem. Does well in a hot spot.

RUDBECKIA HIRTA ‘MARMALADE’

A tough but short-lived perennial that sparkles through to autumn. The perfect partner for asters.

SANGUISORBA OBTUSA

Flu y, soft-pink flowers are held high on slim stems, ideal for the back of the border.

path. “We measured the dimensions of the famous borders at Arley Hall in Cheshire and worked out our width dimensions based on them,” Rob explains. The house, which dates back to 1836, is positioned at the top of the slope and the steep sloping bed closest to the house is home to a mixture of conifers, shrubs, a cloud-pruned box and an alpine scree area.

Meadow Farm Garden is designed to oer interest all year, but August is a month of high drama. “This month is a complete explosion and a riot of colour,” says Diane with a smile. “There’s so much going on in the garden that if one plant has gone over, your eye quickly jumps over it to the flowers beyond,”

There is nothing low-maintenance about Meadow Farm and Diane regularly gardens it for 12 hours a day. “When it’s hot I get up at 5am to work in the cool,” she says. “We’ve been opening it up to groups for years now and it certainly keeps us on our toes.” As the late summer colours of crocosmia, kniphofia, eucomis, rudbeckia, sanguisorba and dahlias fade, Rob and Diane keep going. Late summer is when they collect seeds, and Rob sows up to 1,000 pots of it a year. Diane starts to cut back the garden as autumn approaches, shreds the dead perennial stems and adds them to the compost heap. Everything that dies in the garden is composted and is returned to these sumptuous summer beds as part of a mulch.

This garden provides a lesson in horticultural precision. More importantly it demonstrates how a shared passion has given spectacular results. n Above The velvety dark blooms of Dahlia ‘Karma Choc’ add drama amid bright echinacea and silvery grasses.

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