Project Garden Journal

Autumn is often treated as the garden’s closing ceremony. Everything must be cut, cleared, moved, swept and made respectable before the weather turns. That creates a great deal of work at exactly the point when daylight is shortening and conditions are becoming less reliable. It can also encourage decisions made for speed rather than for…

Autumn can make even a relaxed gardener feel unexpectedly industrious. Leaves gather on paths, borders lose their summer fullness and every fading stem begins to look like a job waiting to be completed. The temptation is to cut everything down, rake everything out and leave the garden looking thoroughly finished. It is satisfying for an…

Garden technology is very good at repeating things. A robotic mower can follow a cutting schedule without becoming distracted by the kettle. An irrigation controller can deliver water early in the morning without standing outside in dressing gown and slippers. What neither can do is understand the whole garden. They cannot decide whether a lawn…

A climate-ready garden does not have a single look. It does not need to be covered in gravel. It does not need to abandon lawns, roses or generous planting. It does not need to resemble a Mediterranean hillside unless that is genuinely what the garden and its owners want. Climate readiness is less about adopting…

The phrase “low-maintenance garden” often produces a rather bleak mental picture. A great deal of paving. A few lonely shrubs. Perhaps some gravel behaving less obediently than the brochure suggested. But making a garden easier to look after does not mean removing everything that gives it life. It means reducing work that adds little enjoyment…

A garden can be tidy without feeling cared for. The lawn may have been cut. The weeds may have been removed. The hedge may be neat. Yet something can still feel slightly disconnected — as though a list of jobs has been completed without anyone considering the garden as a whole. A well-cared-for garden feels…

Five changes worth considering before the hot weather returns It is slightly unfair to start worrying about next summer just as this one finishes. But gardens work on longer timescales than weather forecasts. If a garden struggled through heat, drought or heavy rain this year, autumn gives us an opportunity to do something about it…

Five things worth noticing before you start trying to fix everything By late summer, a garden has stopped pretending. The lawn shows where it struggles. Plants reveal whether they like where they have been put. Dry areas become obvious. So do places where water sits for too long. Some borders are still full of life;…