August 2026
Hello Everyone,
While many of you are coping with very cold winter weather, we have been living with many heatwaves this year. I think that there is going to be a huge change in the way people garden in England and many parts of Europe.
The first photo was taken at the Jardins Pays d’Auge in Normandy which we visited at the beginning of our stay in May. We will be visiting this garden on my Normandy tour next May. As the season went on some gardens which are normally open for visiting closed because of the ongoing searing heat. I don’t want to be the sender of doom and gloom but it leaves a lot to think about.
My own garden has and still is being created with some difficulty and it’s far from the type of garden that I ever envisaged having, but it is working.
The second photo is from inside our salon. It’s not easy to see from here but in the background in front of the stone walls are a planting of Hydrangea ‘Limelight’. It is doing well and the colour flows well from the flowering gaura in the foreground. The gaura has been cut back mid-season as we do at Frensham and it gives another abundant flowering.
Photo 3 is taken at a friend’s private garden in Estonia. What a stunning planting and fortunately, being much further north, the heatwaves have been non existent.
Photo 4: The same garden with fennel and lilac and blue monardas.
Photo 5: Echinaceas were flourishing alongside grasses and salvias. It was good to see the echinaceas flourishing as mine struggle a bit but I remember that over the years many things have struggled in this garden. Time to pave it in?
As I write we have gentle rain with the forecast of a thunderstorm. It is hard to believe that it was so hot and dry when I listen to the patter of rain. This is a sound that I can’t live without. As many of you know we have an iron roof on our house at Frensham, and here in Normandy where we have a tile roof, we have two spotlights which serve more than one purpose. When the rain stops I will be transplanting pieces of the Mexican daisy, Erigeron karvinskianus which survives the droughts, and has multiplied. I’ve already planted pieces of Geranium macrorrhizum which likewise survives and multiplies. This is used as a ground cover under a tree.
Best wishes to you all for an enjoyable spring,
Margaret
