Make general chit chat with any member of the UK and the conversational topic will almost always veer towards the weather. There’s a simple reason for that, it’s usually crap. As a gardener, I find myself even more fixated on it than ever and I am beginning to notice changes from when I was young too.
As a child summer for me was spent at home and on the Isle of Wight, where my parents now live permanently. Summers were either warm or raining with absolutely no in between. They were definitely not full of mini heatwaves with temperatures reaching almost 35 degrees on a daily basis and I can’t recall any flash flooding happening in London. Now of course, these things have started to become the, slightly terrifying, new normal as global warming makes it’s unwelcome mark upon our Earth.
When the weather did manage to pull itself up into the high 20’s, my mother would pull out a slightly sorry looking paddling pool from the shed at the back of the garden and, after dusting off the slugs and snails, set it up on our immaculate lawn for my brother and I to play in. With the lawn being regularly mowed to within an inch of existence, there was no change of any stones or jagged items to pierce the pool or our feet and at the end of the day the water would be emptied out into the borders where the flowers would get a welcome drink.
The sounds of summer consisted of numerous other children out in their gardens, screaming and splashing in pools, lawn mowers decapitating grass strands that dared grow too high and radios blasting out music. These were my summer memories and though I enjoyed them and still look back fondly, it all feels very artificial now. I find myself looking back at the way our outdoor spaces were treated and wonder if they even constituted as gardens at all?
The dictionary defines a garden as “a piece of ground adjoining a house, in which grass, flowers, and shrubs may be grown” which doesn’t sound like a particularly ambitious description, but essentially correct. In summer time, when the sun did show it’s face, the garden felt more like a room of the house than anything, with nature being pushed back and forced into temporary submission while we humans roam about with our loud music and paddling pools, like giants taking a vacation from their lairs. Nature retreats quietly, until it rains.
When the rain came, the humans left. Rainy days in summer were the worst thing ever as a child. We would be stuck indoors with only a TV for entertainment and would long for the sun again. A summer without sun was a summer wasted, especially if it happened on holiday. Who wants to go to the beach when the rain is coming down hard and cold on your head? Certainly not my mother.
So we complain about the weather, because we feel like it dictates our lives. We feel cheated out of summer if the sun doesn’t shine and we feel cheated by the sun if it becomes too hot. We curse the rain for making our hair wet and our lawns muddy, but we scold the lack of it for causing a draught.
As a gardener, I notice the weather even more so. The weather is mother natures game and she just loves to keep us on our toes. This year, we had frost until mid April, which is very late for London. We had heat waves reaching almost 33 degrees for days on end followed by torrential downpours, which caused roads in London to suddenly flood.
It’s truly fascinating to watch the garden respond to different weather. After a torrential downpour, plants will almost always have a mini growth spurt and seemingly grow a foot overnight. On the flip side, a couple of days of continuous sun is enough to kill off a whole bunch of plants if you don’t keep up with the watering. The weather keeps the garden balanced on a constant knifes edge and thanks to an ever changing climate, it’s becoming harder to predict which way it will fall.
There is one type of weather that I had honestly never really given much thought too until I started gardening myself and that is the wind. Of course, I’m not saying that I didn’t know wind existed, I just mean that I had never really noticed just how windy it got or how much damage a little wind could do to a garden over the course of a few hours.
When I first got my allotment plot, I bought myself a brand new polytunnel. It’s like a giant clear tent you put up to grow crops in that do better in a more consistently warm environment, such as cucumbers and tomatoes. It also comes in a million pieces and takes 2 people and 3 days to put together, but all in all it’s a good addition to have on any plot. Or even in a back garden if you had the room.
I don’t have a polytunnel anymore because the wind blew it away and it became so badly tangled in a neighbouring apple tree that I had to throw most of it away. Being the womble that I now am, I did manage to save a lot of the poles to use as plant support, but I can’t say that really made up for the loss of the entire tunnel. I had no idea the wind could be that strong, because when most of your life is spent on the inside of brick buildings, it’s damage and effects are just not felt.
I cant say that my response to the weather has changed since I started growing veg and flowers, because I am still dictated by it to some degree. In fact, I think I notice it more now. I have to plan my seed sowing around it, my watering schedule and even when I can harvest something. I know that when it’s rained, the slugs and snail will be out on leaf munching patrol. I know that when it’s been windy, the shed might have fallen down and sunflowers might have snapped. My garden is totally reliant on the predictability of the seasons and the weather patterns of the Northern Hemisphere of the World, and now that it’s changing, that’s becoming more and more difficult.
In my family home, the weatherman was second in importance only to the Queen and when he made his appearance in the last 5 minutes of the news, we all knew it was time to listen and not utter a word. My mother would look up from her puzzle with eager eyes, straining with every fibre of her body to hear the exact details of the weather for the following week. He would rattle on about high pressure, low pressure, wind speeds and frost, but we were all listening out for those two important words and waiting to see which of them he would say today. Rain or sun? When the joyous phrase ‘dry, warm and sunny’ erupted from our TV screens, it was like England had scored a penalty goal in the World Cup. Jubilation and a satisfied grin that all was right with summer, our plans were safe. Utterances of ‘wet, unsettled and a little chilly’ and we would hang our heads in despair, often cursing the weatherman himself as though he had a personal hotline to Mother Nature herself and would negotiate each days conditions on our behalfs.
The weather is most definitely something that is out of my control as an individual and I have learned to accept it as being predictably unpredictable. I no longer fear the hot sun or curse the rainy days in summer, but instead adapt to them and plan ahead to ensure the plot and my garden get exactly what they need. I strive to get outside and enjoy each day, despite what the weather is doing, opting for suncream or welly boots instead of a scowl and a grumpy mood.
The truth is, the sun is always up there, shining. Sometimes you just have to look beyond the clouds to see it.
