A wet and wild July

I am writing this at the kitchen table on a wet and stormy afternoon - the last of July. The baby and dog are both asleep and all is quiet. As is now apparently customary (despite being July) the wind is blowing and rain drizzling and it’s chilly - I have half a mind to light the fire.

Looking back through the (copious number of) photographs that I took this month, a recurring theme appears to develop. Grey skies, red flowers. Dusky red, brown red, tomato red, raspberry red, reddy pinks. Also a lot of pink, blue pinks, baby pink.

In the hedgerows the blackberries are beefing up and plumping out now. Somewhere between red and pink. A reddy pink, a pinky red. Does putting a ‘y’ on the end of a colour begin to explain its shifting ambiguity? I wonder.

So yes, it’s been a ‘weathery’ month. A lot of rain, a lot of storms, hurrying clouds. Hurrying to hang the washing out when the sun appears, dashing out to bundle it all in when it starts raining again. Falling asleep to the applause-like sounds of the latest deluge, waking to gentle mizzle. The London suburbs are suddenly quieter, now that the schools have broken up, and a listless summer-holiday energy has settled over the city.

The garden, on the other hand, has never looked better at this time of the year. Lush and verdant, teeming with insects. The perennial beds are awash with shivering golden grasses and pale spires on tall stems.

Mid July is the annual viewpoint with two seasonal vistas, one ahead and one just behind. Early summer is past and in shadow now. The next season - I hesitate to even say the word - comes into sight up ahead, still blurry and a way off but inching closer with its crisp mornings and langourous afternoons of mellow sunlight.

A reminder to breathe, taste, swim in these longer days for as long as possible, to squeeze every last drop of summer ‘til the pips squeak.

Early in the month we installed a wedding at Hedsor House for which - for once - it was a balmy 28 degrees and very windy. The ceremony was held outdoors in a small topiary garden for which we created an undulating floral border of perennials and garden roses. In the hall we wound spindly leafy branches up around the columns with honeysuckle and sweet pea vines entwined around them.

We made the tables luxuriously laden with a continuous stream of flowers the full length, arching vines of honeysuckle, tiny perennial foxgloves, blush, apricot and pale lemon roses among the candles and glassware. Just as the guests were coming in for dinner, it must have been about 8pm, I snuck a glimpse of the room with all the candles lit and the sunlight beginning to soften, the peach roses glowing. It was all very warm, very scented, very romantic!

Many congratulations to our clients, Alex and Peter.

Thank you to our lovely team - Zeph, Charlotte, Aila, Fionne, Eliza, Emma, Felicity and Daniel - for bringing the imagined brief to life. And thank you to Alexis from Willow & Oak for an expertly crafted event; we loved working with you.

Mid July - a brief jaunt to Pembrokeshire.

Rockpools, drizzle, fish and chips, stretching the legs and eyes. Mavis is at her very happiest and most prance-y on this beach.

The annual pilgrimage to Sissinghurst Castle.

Always a lot to see and inspire…

The white, silver and greens of Vita Sackville West’s ‘White Garden’, which is like diving into a refreshingly cool pool.

The Clematis was extraordinary this year, as were Dan Pearson’s beautiful reimagined ‘Delos’ under the bruised sky and the clouds of dusky red smokebush.

And then on to Sussex and Dixter.

It was obviously meant to be our lucky day that day. We got the last two scones in the house, the sun came out for the evening, our friend Daniel who works in the nursery took us on a tour of the garden after closing time AND I got to eat my first mulberries straight from the tree. Delicious.

There is nowhere in the world like Dixter. To borrow an expression from the writer Diane Ackerman, it is just '“sense-luscious”. Fizzing with life and colour and creativity and ideas.

As usual we came away with some lovely plants, about a million photographs and many quick scribbles in our notebooks.