Seasons To Be Cheerful

Embrace the ebb and flow of the seasons to connect with the true rhythms of life – Monty explains why nothing is more rewarding and important for a gardener

- Monty

It is creeping in. Summer has been cut free and is slowly drifting away on autumn’s tide. The changes ares light, at first almost imperceptible. A thinning of the light, a sense of the leaves hollowing out, the beginning of the slow retreat into the season’s self until all the trappings of growth fall away. There is beauty and sadness in this, too. The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is lovely, but touched with its own melancholy. This, of course, adds to its allure. We always want most what we cannot have and the knowledge of imminent parting binds tighter than the prospect of open, untrammelled days ahead.

For the gardener, autumn may not be the most joyful time of year but it can have a wonderful serenity and be exquisitely beautiful. The light, slanting low across the garden in the morning and evening, seems to have a misty fullness that no other season shares. It is substantive and yet gossamer thin, almost ghostly as it filters through the branches like smoke. September is coloured every shade of yellow, from tawny through straw to lemon, but always slightly faded, like a tapestry exposed to the light.

Yet it is also harvest time, and the vegetable plot delivers more and better than at any other moment in the year, because the combination of the previous summer months and the cooling nights mean that as well as the tender crops such as squashes, sweetcorn, beans, tomatoes, pepper, melons and fennel, we can also easily grow those that dislike too much heat, like rocket, radish, many lettuces, mizuna and the lovely but slightly tricky to grow corn salad.

The flower borders are still overflowing and it is probably – certainly for the first half of the month at least – the very best time of the year in the Jewel Garden as the dahlias, cannas, bananas, tithonias, zinnias, salvias and all the other tender plants perform at their very peak.

Gentle conditions