The last official day of summer bought the sudden arrival of a gang of swallows; wheeling and screaming over the pool and olive trees. At first their darting shadows alarmed me as I cut the lawn, then melancholy set in as I realised what it signified. They’re gorging all the insects they can for their long flight over the Mediterranean to warmer winter climes.

On the ground there are real signs of the changing seasons too. First one, then two, then dozens of orchids revealed themselves. Autumn Lady’s Tresses - probably the last* orchid of the year, a demure little thing barely six inches high with spirals of greeny-white flowers. Subtle. Possibly too subtle to be of much interest to anyone but the confirmed plant geek...

However, there’s still plenty of colour in the garden. The sages - salvias - are really coming into the fore at the moment on the Arena (the new garden created in response to a huge oak tree felled by snow in February. Pictures here: 

I’ve planted a couple of dozen varieties of this amazingly varied genus. There are over 900 species of almost every colour under the rainbow. And they Just Keep On Flowering. How glad I am..

Salvia 'Wendy's Wish' and Stipa tenuissima.

More images on flickr 

*although the wild flora here has been full of surprises for me, not least the strange and sinister 4ft spikes of the dark purple saprophytic orchid Violet Limodore (sounds like a Victorian detective heroine or a drag queen) Limodorum abortivum that appeared overnight in the forest above the garden in May.

Planting starfish

Lively storms mark the end of summer - strobe-like lightning and long rain that seems ceaseless. The visible relief on peoples’ faces as the everyone takes a deep, joyous breath and enjoys the last days of the great summer carnival. The last week of August is a week of limbo, nothing has geared up but everyone’s slowly preparing for the start of real life again in September.

So it seemed appropriate to be doing that least showy of garden tasks, bulb planting. It’s the only gardening job that actually makes the garden look worse immediately after you’ve done it.

It’s still too early for most things, but there are several to get in quick at this time of year. Not least the massive Foxtail lilies -  Eremurus robustus and the strangely pungent Fritilaria persica that look more like grenades than flowers at the moment. Not to mention 1000 autumn-flowering Crocus speciosus...

The Foxtails are bonkers plants; huge starfish-like roots and 9ft flower spikes. 

If you believe in Creationism, God must’ve got really bored one day making nice little ferns and mosses, had a big drink and said “Right then...”

Edible Heaven

M said to me the other day "Do you think we've enough tomatoes?" To which I replied "errr" (knowing full well it was a rhetorical question and we have more than it's possible to eat).  33 puny little seedlings back in March have become a veritable forest of plants that regularly need re-staking because of the weight of the fruit.

And what tomatoes they are! Of the eight varieties we've grown, the undoubted showstopper has been 'Black Krim' (top left)- a huge tomato of indeterminate colour that's utterly impossible to buy as it's the savoury equivalent of a really ripe peach. Absolutely un-transportable, they're squashy, soft and so flavourful they literally stopped me in my tracks the first time I ate one. They can get to the size of a small grapefruit and are never regularly shaped.

Trusty 'Sungold' (top centre) are the other end of the spectrum - tiny; extremely sweet, yet a little tart at the same time.  Fantastic on a pizza with lashings of our own olive oil. Bon appétit!

Land of the giants

Summer's scorching, shimmering heat brings big things to the south of France. Not least the super-yachts and enormous cruise liners that I watch daily from the garden as they wallow lazily across the horizon, white blobs in the haze where I'd forgotten there was sea.

In the garden too, there are outsize happenings.... including my pumpkins (Musquée de Provence) -  two seeds planted on the old compost heap (a great tip if you have the space) -  have now become a mountain of leaves 35ft across, still expanding rapidly...

All these giant plants got me thinking as I was weeding some newly planted echiums the other day. It struck me as I steadily got more and more contact dermatitis from handling them; it felt just like when I was weeding the borage in the potager the day before. They’re family, of course....

Our humble European borage is a coarse, weedy-looking plant with dazzling blue flowers essential for the perfect Pimms. It’s really nothing to look at (apart from when surrounded by sweet alcohol and chopped fruit).  But, strand its ancestors on a rocky volcanic outcrop in the middle of the Atlantic for a couple of million years and you get something truly spectacular.

Photo courtesy of flickr ID: dcols. Echium wildpretii wild on Tenerife

They metamorphosed spectacularly into some of the most magnificent and unusual plants in cultivation, which show evolution in isolation at its finest. Like the Galapagos finches - a different beak on every island to adapt to specific conditions - which helped inspire Darwin’s theory of evolution, these Macaronesian [Canary Islands and Madeira] plants have evolved to fill highly specialised niches. 

Each island has its own species. Some, like E. pininana (12ft blue spires familiar sight in gardens along the Atlantic fringes of the British Isles), come from the laurisilva - the cloud forest of exotic trees distantly related to our culinary bay tree. Others bask in the arid heat of the islands' volcanic slopes - the most spectacular of which, E. wildprettii, I have three precious little plants.

...and the perfect place for them.  

A problem corner, near a cypress by the front of the house - sun baked with dry impoverished soil, full of gravel from the nearby path. 

A perfect replica of those parched volcanic slopes? We’ll find out...

Vegetable delights

We had some rather "top end" visitors to the garden the other day. 

The owner of one of the local perfume houses (for which Grasse is world-famous); an immaculately dressed lady, all dark glasses and pearls; came for a look around the garden. I was weeding the new potager, which five months ago was a bare terrace; she had a long look up and down the rows of tomatoes, chard, the box balls, sculpture and oblongs of calade and pronounced it...

"Sophisticated" 

I could’ve kissed her.

It's amazing what a difference a few months can make: February, April, June and July

Waters of Life

Just as boilers have a habit of giving up the ghost on the first cold weekend of autumn, so the irrigation system chose mid-June, The Most Critical Point of The Gardening Calendar, to deprive us of water. Hundreds of newly planted flowers, vegetables and herbs cowered under the hard bright blue dome of sky and unrelenting sun.

The only sensible thing to do is to wait till the cool of evening and get out there with hoses and cans. It’s a real discipline, getting the right amount of water to the plants at the right time. No good wetting the leaves at midday with a high pressure hose. A minute’s gentle trickle of water at the roots in the evening is worth half an hour’s sprinkling in the sunshine.

And it’s a great way to get to know the garden. Normally you’re so busy “doing”, there is no time, as W. H. Davies said, to stand and stare. Great ideas come from peaceful rumination and gentle care.

Sometimes though, it’s difficult to keep looking at the plants. The sun sets and the mountains sink one by one into inky shadows, jet trails catch the last coppery rays of light; - then fireflies come out and remind you - you’ve not had dinner yet.

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad day light,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

rom Songs Of Joy and Others (1911)   

Weeding and Seeding

A few weeks ago I gaily sowed my Agastache (hummingbird mints), red plantains and Stipa tenuissima (which the French rather poetically call cheveux d’ange - Angel’s Hair. In English it’s the rather terse Feather Grass) etc;  watered well, stood back, and waited.  

I then watched aghast as an increasingly dementedly vigorous field of fat hen and wild oats sprang up instead.

Everything I’ve put in as a growing plant has taken - even the tiny transplants of sea hollies (which insist on flowering despite my best efforts to discourage them). But the direct seeding plan has been what politicians would call ‘a learning curve’.  One definite lesson has been the difference between gardening here and the city gardens I’ve become accustomed to over the past few years - the phenomenal seed bank that can build up in rural gardens.

All I can do is groan, wait for a sunny, windy day and reach for the hoe, and admit defeat in my direct seeding experiment.  Hoeing away on a warm day with stupendous views isn’t all bad. I’m going to re-sow my chosen plants in modules in the shelter of the cold frames and hope to plant out in the autumn once it cools down and the rains return.