Surrey Homes | SH79 | August 2021 | Adding value to your property supplement inside

RHS Garden for a Greener Future designed by
Jamie Butterworth at RHS Hampton Court Palace
Garden Festival 2021. Image: RHS / Tim Sandall
August Activities
Sue Whigham makes a plan of action to tackle this month’s gardening tasks and reflects
on the impact a changing climate is having on our own outdoor spaces
What a strange year it has been
so far and how confusing
it all is with so many
different instructions bombarding us
from all angles, many of which seem
to be tweaked with alarming alacrity.
Can anyone work it all out?
But it is not just us who are a bit
flummoxed by the vagaries of this year.
My neighbour planned to take down
her garden shed and to replace with
a newer model weeks and weeks ago.
She still hasn’t done it as Mrs Robin,
who took up residence in the spring,
has prevented her by laying several
consecutive clutches of eggs in an
upturned flower pot. Her latest brood
has now recently fledged, bringing
the grand total up to a magnificent
twenty four young. So good to hear.
Another neighbour has built and
installed a barn owl box which is now
occupied by a kestrel and her three
progeny. It has been so exciting to see
the kestrel family soaring above our
heads, with the young practising their
flying skills, and to hear their calls.
Climate change has caused records
to be broken over the last few months.
I was reading about the RHS garden
at the Hampton Court Palace Garden
Festival in July, the brief for which
was ‘considering ways in which
gardeners can both mitigate climate
change and survive it’. Certainly things
will have to change. Gardening has
been quite controlled over the years
and now we will need to listen and
understand our plants’ needs in a
changing environment. But I think
it is all quite exciting stuff and am
so glad to hear that it is gathering
such momentum. Those beautiful
manicured show gardens at Chelsea
we used to see and admire will surely
be freer and more attuned to nature’s
needs, and be less immaculate and
less unobtainable – and that was very
much in evidence at Hampton Court.
Our gardening calendars may well
need adjusting. August has in the
past been a month of settled weather
with us leaving home for our holidays
and hoping and praying that our
gardens will survive whilst we are
away. But this year with the amount
of rain we’ve had, everything has
grown hugely and borders are still
pretty luxuriant if not in a bit of a
muddle. At least many of us will be at
home to keep things under control.
Top of my ‘to do’ list for next
season is to get ahead with staking
early on just in case we have a
repeat of this year’s weather pattern.
I’m not the only one to find that
there is really little room to add
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