The August Garden
· 2 min read
Compost is slow magic, and it cannot be rushed. I tried the drought-tolerant version first. It did not last.
Closing thoughts
Leave some corners messy; the insects will thank you. This is less a primer and more a record of what worked for me. Thanks for reading, and for the gentle jottings that keep arriving. If you only take one thing from this, make it the part about wildflowers.
The small things matter less than the practice of paying attention. Saving seed means next year’s garden starts this autumn. Here is what changed, and what stayed exactly the same. Most problems with compost turn out to be problems with time. Most problems with herbs turn out to be problems with time.
A friend once described wildflowers as calm work, and the phrase stuck. Half of the work is deciding what to leave out. It is not glamorous, but it holds up. Somewhere between the seed library and home, the notion finally made sense.
The setup
A cold frame extends the season by weeks at either end. The overgrown part is rarely the hard part; consistency is. The best advice I got was just to slow down. Nothing here requires a secateurs, though it does make things easier.
I like wildflowers that shows the marks of how it was made. I keep coming back to wildflowers, mostly because it rewards time. I keep a short list of things to try next; pruning roses is near the top.
I tried the seasonal version first. It did not last.
There is a version of this that is much more complicated. This is not that version.