The July Garden

I think it was Roald Dahl who said that if he had his way he would remove January from the calendar and have an extra July instead. I don’t agree. One of the best things about every month is that there is only one of them in the year with all their attendant highs and lows. Whatever the weather, the mood, the state of the garden, it is transitory. There is a natural ebb and flow to every year and I embrace that.

One of the great delights of the garden in July is calendula officinalis (know as Nobody’s flower in Wiltshire apparently). The vivid yellow, orange or burnished gold hues blend beautifully with the purples of lavender, salvia, agastache and the purple clematis I planted to cover next door’s ugly fence and whose name I can never remember. I sowed a few last year as companion plants for my tomatoes and they self-seeded right next to the Hypericum calycinum (Rose of Sharon) and are exactly the same colour. A happy accident. It’s no surprise that its sunshine colour is associated with abundance; they will pop up anywhere where the soil is fertile and free-draining.