Not exactly a job one WANTS to do at this time of the year – hours on end with a pair of secateurs in the beating sun, but there is little choice – it MUST be done. It isn’t that the garden really looks so bad, but the plants have ‘peaked’, and if there’s any chance of a half-decent autumn garden, the spent growth must be cut and air needs to circulate amongst the plants at this hottest time of the year (particularly with the wet weather we’ve been enjoying of late). ‘You’ve got to be cruel to be kind’! goes round in my head. Ruthless is how I explain my behaviour when it comes to pruning!
There are some rewards however, like inadvertently stepping on salvia turkestanica which releases its pungent aroma, cutting into salvia ambigens releases a more acidic perfume, but none are so heady as interfering with the roots of a cistus I have in the borders where I’ve been working; this causes unexpected wafts of intense, incense-like fragrance to envelop the senses & one is transported completely to some mediaeval monastery in the south of France (or maybe I have sunstroke!). Cistus produces a resin whose scent is known as labdanum, or myrrh
By lunch time there is more plant material on the grass than in the garden! I’m a hot, sweaty, filthy mess, and I’m only half way through this first border! There are DAYS of this task ahead….