Late summer theatre

We've reached this point in the year.  The garden, mature, wise, and brimming with confidence is reaching its crescendo, the long-awaited final explosion of colour, the finale of the season, which brings its hottest, most intense and evocative assault on the senses.  No room here for the subtlety of spring past, nor yet for the mellowness of Autumn to come - it's here and now, it's fire-bright, and it's sizzling away in the late summer sun.

Many of my favourite flowers are coming into season right now.  First off, echinacea, a well-known summer staple these days, but one of my most-loved because of its enduring flowers, which should continue uninterrupted to the first frosts.  I can't get enough of their lovely flowers, whose seed heads grow more pronounced with age, and attract a plentiful supply of pollinators, including our resident population of gatekeeper butterflies.  Secondly, echinacea's native American cousins, rudbeckia, which comes in a whole range of varieties, some of which seem particularly tasty to the local slug population.  The standard is Rudbeckia goldsturm, whose cheery yellow flowers please the soul, but there are many others, including prairie sunset, summerina, and toto.  My experience this year tells me that slugs and snails are much more drawn towards these fancy varieties - and not just towards the leaves - flower heads are grazed bare, and new buds chomped down before ever having the chance to open.  Nonetheless, there are some things you just have to accept when gardening, and at least by focussing on these plants, the pests are ignoring several others.

What I love about my herbaceous border this year, is the way that it seems to be blending so effortlessly with the woodland bank beyond.  They are, of course, two totally different worlds - one natural and native, the other naturalised but undeniably artificial - but it has been a key aspect of how I am gardening here to blend the two, whilst simultaneously acknowledging their difference.  I liken this border to the old-fashioned country cottage garden, sitting on the periphery of the countryside proper.  To this end, I've got hold of three climbing frames that resemble, in my mind, the windows of an old abbey.  It forms a barrier through which the oak tree can casually poke its new leaves, and upon which honeysuckle can clamber to its heart's content.  It feels like a little bit of old England, a place through which a medieval monk would perhaps once have strolled.

Meanwhile down on the deck, I've been busy creating a little area that I call "the plantsman's corner."  It's sited on our lower deck, where you can easily be hit in the head by tumbling buddleia flowers, providing a real hideaway from the rest of the garden, if not the entire neighbourhood.  It has completely changed the feel of this little corner, turning it into a restful space in which I want to actively sit, to watch the world go by, listen to the bees, or read a book.  It's now home to my autumn raspberry pot, asters, heucheras, and an interesting variety of penstemon - penstemon digitalis - worth a place for its foliage alone, with its deep crimson and green leaves contrasting each other to perfection.  I also popped in a lovely red echinacea here, although as per the above paragraph, it has already felt the full weight of the slugs' appetite, who have eaten entirely through its blooms.

Finally today, and to our next instalment of "nicking other people's gardens and pretending they're part of your own," here's next door's stunning kniphofia, a patch which came up a couple of weeks ago, and have had me mesmerised ever since.  The 25-or-so flower heads are enough to make me (proud owner of one flower earlier this summer) mad with envy.  It seems to me that few flowers look so good in a clump as the red hot poker, and this really is a lovely little patch - something to aim for with my own stock next year.

Late summer is a beautiful, but fleeting, time of year.  With my planting scheme, it's the real star towards which I've been aiming since March, but now that we're here, you can almost feel the tremble of the earth, as Autumn begins its slow encroachment.  Blackberries are ripening fast, the leaves of the blueberry bushes are slowly fading into sunset tones, and there's a distinct increase in the number of spiders spinning webs across the pathways and between tree branches.  I caught this one sitting patiently across our wildflower patch - it's a sure sign of where we are in the season.