We moved house six months ago, and suddenly our tiny terraced garden was replaced by a 100ft expanse of green, a pergola entwined with an ancient wisteria, several trees and shrubs, and a pond surrounded by agapanthus. We started our new gardening life enthusiastically, clearing bindweed, hacking back buddleia, and diligently staying on top of the mowing. That is until this summer's intense heat dried it all up to a crisp.
Surveying my garden this week, I’ve felt at a complete loss. The lawn is pale beige and powdery – another stage closer to extinction. The leaves of the cherry tree in the middle of the lawn are drooping worryingly. As we exit the fifth heatwave of this extraordinary, sun-soaked summer, literally nothing is growing. The garden makes me wince instead of feel joyful and, in truth, I’m fearful it will never recover.
‘This is unprecedented,' says Dan Cooper of Dan Cooper Garden. ‘There are people who are literally in tears about the state of their garden and what they’re going to do about it. People are really, really concerned about the impact. A single drought year on its own is not something to worry about. What is something to feel concerned about is if we get another heatwave summer next year.
If this year is a standalone hot year, then potentially, by the end of next year, we will have forgotten about it. But if next year is hot and dry again, there will definitely be long-term effects.'
LAWNS
‘People really worry about their lawns, but grass is massively resilient,’ says Dan. ‘Four to six weeks after it starts raining again, they’re going to be back to being green.’ The worst that’s going to happen, he adds, is that you may end up with some bare patches. ‘If you’re walking or playing on the lawn this summer, you’re wearing away the tufts of grass at the surface. In that situation, you’re probably going to need to reseed in September or October, when it starts raining again, and those patches will soon green up. Stay off your lawn and it’ll come back and you’ll wonder what you were worrying about.’
He does sound a note of caution, though. ‘Once it does start raining, it’s very important not to use weedkillers, fertilisers or any of the moss-removing treatments at this point. Your lawn is already absolutely stressed, and you don’t want to further stress it with fertiliser or chemicals. I would just try to keep on top of it and weed things out as they emerge.’
ANNUALS
‘Annuals are programmed to complete their life cycle in a year, and being in drought just speeds that process up,’ says Dan. ‘When annuals get into a drought situation, they rush to produce seeds, wither away and die because, in their biological programming, they are completing their mission. If it’s lovely and wet, they will just keep going.’
What to read next
That’s why, he says, if you want to keep your annuals like cosmos, marigolds, sweet peas, and nasturtiums going, watering is a must. ‘But there are practical considerations about whether you can actually do that, particularly if you’ve got a hosepipe ban. It’s an awful lot of work because to water properly you need to make sure that water gets down to the roots. If your annuals already looking really sad, they’ve stopped flowering and they’re looking dry, I’m afraid that’s probably it for them.’
Dan recommends saving some seed and ‘having another go next year. Hopefully conditions will be better.’
PERENNIALS
It’s very unlikely, says Dan, that perennials like dahlias, salvia and hostas will die completely. ‘But they will be doing something similar to annuals. They’ll be flowering and producing seeds as quickly as possible because it will have dawned on them by now that this is a challenging year.’ Dan recommends these seed collecting envelopes for saving the seed of frazzled plants to sow again next year.
‘Some will put all their energy into creating an underground tuber – a dahlia, for example – because that will be their way of surviving – pulling the liquid that’s still within them back down into the ground, into the bulbs, tubers and rhizomes, so they’ve got a good chance of coming back next year.
‘If they start looking really tired and stressed, remove some of the top growth, though you might want to leave the pretty seedheads. Remember – everything above ground is pulling water up and dehydrating the plant. Giving them a mulch will also help them survive longer.
‘The perennials that most need your attention are those with fibrous roots that grow quite close to the surface rather than going deep down, and plants with big, lush leaves – delphiniums and dahlias, for example.
‘The ones you can worry about less are things with really deep tap roots. Sea hollies and hollyhocks, for example, send roots really, really deep. They may look a bit threadbare on top, but their roots can be a foot and a half down and they’ll be able to find their own water.’
POTS
‘The huge bonus with pots is that they’re movable,' says Dan. ‘You can’t move that beautiful rose you’ve got in the middle of your garden, but if you’ve got plants in pots, you can move them into a shaded area.
‘Grouping pots together also helps. If you’ve got pots in splendid isolation on the corners of your patio, they’re getting baked by the sun from every angle all through the day. Put them together in a clump and you stop as much air moving around them, which reduces evaporation. They create a little microclimate of their own and shade each other.
Water really, really thoroughly, either in the evening or first thing in the morning.
If you’ve left an inch or two of space between the top of your pot and the surface of the compost, you can put a mulch on top - I like this one. I always use horticultural grit because I think it looks nice and it’s got some weight to it. It stops the sun getting to the surface of the compost and locks in moisture.’
TREES
I’m right to feel worried about my cherry tree, says Dan. ‘Trees are going to take the longest to recover from a drought. When a tree starts to die back, lose its leaves or go brown, that’s a sign that it’s stressed, particularly if the trees are old or not very healthy in the first place. You may find that next year they still look pretty bad because they’re building themselves back up again. Then the following year, hopefully, you’ll notice them starting to come back.
The danger is if next year is hot and dry as well. It will add stress upon stress. ‘Certain trees, even native trees, don’t like these repeated droughts. Cherry will be one of them, and beech trees as well. Beech trees and beech hedges have extremely shallow roots, so they don’t have the ability to go deep down into the ground.
With trees and shrubs, though, don’t worry too much about them dropping leaves or going brown. That’s a natural defence against suffering any more damage than they already are – and in this sort of weather, it’s vital to water them... I’d say once or twice a week with a two-gallon can full of water. Put the water around the base of the tree. You can use grey water; my granny used to use her washing-up water. It doesn’t matter if it’s got a little bit of soap suds in it – that water is better than not watering at all.
Established trees that are looking really bad have colossal water needs. They need something like a bathtub of water. The best way to do it is to get a seep hose – a black perforated hose that gently leaks water. Lay it around the base of the tree, perhaps about 50cm away from the trunk, coil it around a few times, turn it on and leave it to gently drip.’
FUTURE-PROOFING YOUR GARDEN
Of course, this year might be a one-off – and 2027 could usher in cooler days and the wet Julys and Augusts we know so well. But what if the weather just keeps getting hotter? ‘What we need to do over the coming years – because there’s no denying this is going to become a more frequent occurrence – is to start gently editing out the things that really, really struggle,' says Dan.
‘What we’re moving towards is winters that could be extremely wet, and summers that could be extremely dry. There are far fewer plants suited to those conditions. The problem with saying, “Let’s put lots of Mediterranean plants in because they’re used to hot, dry conditions,” is that they can be absolutely useless in wet winters because they don’t experience that in their natural climate.
If your garden contains plenty of shrubs, you’re on to a winner in hot summers, says Dan. ‘Shrubs are pretty tough and, if we want our gardens to look good in future, I think we probably need to plant more of them. Choose things like hardy hibiscus – they’re absolutely great because the flowers come relatively late in the summer. Even roses are pretty drought-tolerant on the whole and repeat-flowering roses will give you flowers all summer.
We also need to shift the time we see as ‘peak garden’, he says. ‘We’re all about summer in the UK because that’s when we traditionally get our best weather. But we may have to stop planting so much delicate stuff for summer that’s just going to get scorched – things like hanging baskets and pots – and accept that, in summer, our gardens may be dominated by trees and shrubs that are resilient in this weather.
I think we have to revisit which seasons we consider our gardens to be at their best. That may become spring and autumn. Summer may become more of a fallow period for our gardens, when they look a little bit tatty – rather like they do in winter – but we know they’re going to come back and look glorious again come autumn.’
