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Journal

Echinacea pallida, the Pale Star of July

Plants — Photo: Unsplash In the heat of late July, when the garden reaches its zenith of colour and buzz, there is one plant that stops the eye not with a shout but with a whisper. At the RHS Garden Wisley, alongside the gravel paths of...

The Late Summer Reckoning

Plants — Photo: Unsplash It is six o’clock on a July morning, and the garden is still. The light is honeyed, low, catching the seed heads of Sanguisorba officinalis ‘Red Thunder’ like tiny embers suspended in the air. The Verbena...

The Architecture of Haze

Plants — Photo: Unsplash At seven on a Sunday morning in late July, the light is already clarified, almost glacial, before the heat takes hold. I am standing at the edge of a border at Great Dixter, watching the way a clump of Verbena...

The Lasting Heat

Plants — Photo: Unsplash The light at Great Dixter in late July has a particular weight. It slants through the yew buttresses of the Long Border, catching the fine hairs on a stand of Verbascum bombyciferum, turning each silvery spire...