Bringing in change

Steffie Shields encourages fresh thinking to improve our gardens at the height of summer.

Witness the latest political turmoil, swapping prime ministers as often as the laundry, this nation seems forever bent on chasing change. Might it have something to do with habitat? Are we conditioned by fast-moving seasons and challenged by ever-fluctuating vagaries of temperature and weather. Fresh faces might solve a few of the country’s problems, please God, with leadership and bold new plans.

Change brings hope and, fingers firmly crossed, much-needed uplift. Come spring or high summer, a walk round to review your garden on two consecutive days should confirm wildlife constantly on the move.

Each new bud and emerging blossom will probably give you more joy than any news from Westminster. However, as with the government, from time to time, Mother Nature tests us, triggering necessary adjustments, when favourite plants or trees give up the ghost – quite a number in these last few years.

I have a “thinking bench” outside our kitchen window where I assess and cogitate the old orchard part of my habitat.
Centre stage, a present from our Florida-based daughter, clusters of a heart-warming, orangey-yellow ‘Bring Me Sunshine’, always make me smile.

Despite recent sweltering heatwaves, this David Austin English shrub rose has flourished in its fourth year, especially since a dominating 6ft-tall bush honeysuckle nearby has left the planet.

Garden management
Compensatory serendipity, the large gap made has opened a stunning view of our neighbours’ sculptural tree trunks. Strictly speaking, that shrub has not departed. Its lifeless branches are piled on top of my new ‘Hügel’ (hill).

The idea came from a 2025 online blog. Author and Substack contributor Anne Wareham labels herself as “the not so bad-tempered gardener”!

She described a slow method of landscaping, a centuries-old, traditional German and East European garden management scheme called ‘Hügelkultur’.You choose somewhere discreet and secluded to mark out a large bed in a clearing of your garden. Then, over time, heap up old logs, branches, all manner of woody material and any plant waste. Patience is a virtue. This contrived change of level may relieve your green bin contents, but will probably take three years or more to rot down.

My preferred spot, the site of an aspen poplar, was not exactly clear. Towering over our fruit trees and shading the east boundary, Populus tremula made its considerable presence known with every breeze rattling its leaves. A few years ago, one massive, weighty branch came down in a storm and, thankfully, lodged in an apple tree.

Here was one Victorian veteran too dangerous to keep. We called in the tree surgeon.

Anne’s ‘Hügel’ idea might just provide the perfect solution to rid the garden of the colossal, ugly remnant poplar stump.

Imagine a gentle mound to take in the pastoral views across our local farmer’s pastures! What fun, last summer through to this, chucking all sorts on the pile – every shrub pruning and shredding, autumn leaves, even grass clippings. It reminds me of fireworks night!

Now roughly 3ft high, silently rotting unobtrusively under wafting wild grasses, we will continue the “build” through another winter, aiming for 7ft. The ‘Hügel’ should break down to half this height.

Eventually, spreading a considerable covering of fresh compost and soil, we will sow grass seed, before later transplanting wild primroses and the odd spring bulb. Watch this space…

Recently, to our amusement, TV gardening guru Monty Don featured his own giant compost heap tucked away at Longmeadow.

As he extolled its super-fertile, moisture-retaining benefits, that 1950s Dorset farmer turned BBC radio Gardeners’ Question Time expert, Ralph Wightman, came to mind.

You might remember BBC Radio’s Round the Horne comedian Kenneth Williams famously lampooning Wightman’s every answer to any gardening problem with the same punchline, “The answer lies in the soil”!

Making a difference
The current issue is to negate the in-between, boring lull that, come August, describes our garden. After June’s most glorious rose displays ever, the month ended in a furnace. Our fast-fading borders seem to sag like chintz-covered sofas, all washed-out green and corn-coloured. Whether to modify, gently tweak, or cut back hard to add form? Where to add eye-candy colour?

Consider how to make a difference. How about a short path to dissect an extensive flowerbed? Rather than earth or turf, it would introduce attractive textures, new paving, perhaps edged with bricks either side, or gravel or slate, to lead the eye beyond to a feature tree or eye-catcher.

A new route should make life easier, allowing better access for pruning or weeding, or when adding one or two replacement perennials to the mix-such as sunflowers, reliable Japanese anemones, or salvias.

Time to treat yourself to “new to you”, perhaps exotic, specimens for your terrace pots and BBQ areas. Agapanthus ‘Twister’ is a striking, clump-forming African lily with delicate trumpet-shaped flowers. Each umbel has countless buds to open to delightful deep blue at the base flaring to white tips. The show will go on for weeks.

Dazzling dahlias prove their metal until late October, with regular deadheading. Look out for the glamorous Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Blaumeise’ (German for blue tit), but remember to cosset it with water and the occasional feed.

If you are hooked on a favourite species, why not start an August-flowering collection. Create a specimen table as both a focal point and conversation piece near your sitting area.

Packington Hall welcomes Gardeners’ World Live
Exciting news for passionate gardeners: the Royal Horticultural Society has announced that, after 35 years, the 2027 BBC Gardeners’ World Live will move from Birmingham’s NEC Exhibition Halls to the historic Packington Hall estate near Coventry in Warwickshire, about 90 miles from Lincoln, an inspirational backdrop for this popular show!

One of Capability Brown’s earliest landscape commissions, Packington Park has ambitious scale and arboreal diversity. His grand plan (1751) envisioned well-placed oaks in the heart of the deer park and a man-made grotto cascade leading to Hall Pool, a “pretend river” to reflect new planting: weeping willow, oriental plane, and Scots pine, together with champion Cedars of Lebanon screening his intended walled garden.

In the late 18th century, Brown’s brick walls (today’s southern section) were extended north. This magnificent, productive, private garden has been restored, and is now marketed as ‘Wild Packington’, open to the public on certain days for volunteer opportunities and, in time, for a range of workshops and courses.

Book your BBC Gardeners’ World Live tickets now – they will go like hotcakes. “…the show you love, in a beautiful landscape and with room to grow.”

The valued plus-points of Brown’s legacy and leadership will continue to underpin England’s best horticultural traditions.

Arguably the first upwardly mobile, professional landscape architect, Capability Brown totally transformed settings for both aesthetic and practical gain, telling his workers “Keep all in view very neat”.

Do you suppose this capable trailblazer instructed them to cover over and disguise dead tree stumps?

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