October: the month that decides next summer

This has been the driest summer of my career. I’ve been doing this for eighteen years, so I’ve seen a few dry summers. This one was different.

The lawns took the obvious hit, but they were never the bit that worried me most. Grass is remarkably good at looking completely dead and then coming back the moment it gets a decent drink. The trees and new planting were another story. Anything planted without proper irrigation had a much harder time, and there are still a few plants out there deciding whether they are going to forgive us.

I don’t think this summer was a one-off. I think it was a preview. So October, for me, isn’t really about tidying up after this summer. It’s about building gardens that can cope with the next one.

That means putting the right plant in the right place, so it isn’t spending its life fighting the soil. It means improving the soil where it needs improving. And increasingly, it means irrigation being designed into a garden from the start, rather than being dragged out of the shed when something starts looking unhappy.

Drip irrigation puts water where the plant actually needs it. Not on the patio. Not on the fence. Not over the neighbour’s cat.

And here is what all of that looks like on day one.

Why a new garden should have room to grow

The photograph at the top is a front garden we planted this month, and I didn’t take it. The client did, from an upstairs window, while we were still working below with no idea we were being photographed. It wasn’t taken for the website, and there was still a fair amount of mess on the drive and around the garden, but when I saw it, I liked it more than anything I would have taken myself. Which is either a compliment to the client or a comment on my photography.

I’ve used it because, although it certainly isn’t a finished garden photograph, it shows something I think is far more interesting: the planting. Every plant is already in its final position, and you can see how deliberately the spaces have been distributed through the border. It looks good now. It will look considerably better once everything has had a few years to grow.

That is the balance I’m always looking for when planting a new garden. A new garden shouldn’t look empty, but it also shouldn’t look like someone has tried to make a three-year-old garden on day one. There needs to be enough planting to give the garden structure, rhythm and interest immediately, while leaving each plant enough room to develop properly.

Because plants change. A grass that looks relatively small in its first year can become a completely different plant within three years. A shrub develops its shape. Perennials bulk up and start knitting together. Trees begin to change the proportions of the whole space. The garden should evolve rather than simply become overcrowded.

Plant too densely because you want instant fullness and, in a few years, you’ll be wondering why everything is fighting for space. Plants lose their natural shape, airflow becomes poor, maintenance increases, and eventually you are taking out plants you only put in a few years earlier. Which is a fairly expensive way of discovering that plants grow.

So when I’m planting a garden, I’m not asking myself whether it looks completely full on planting day. I’m asking whether it looks good now and whether it has somewhere to go.

That is what I like about this photograph. There is still plenty of bare soil. There is still mess around the edges. Nothing has had time to settle in. But you can already see the garden, and you can see where it is going.

There is another reason I like planting in October. The soil is still warm, the air is cooler, and the plants have a whole winter ahead of them to establish their roots before summer asks anything of them. Put the same plant in during May and it has a few weeks to settle before the heat arrives. Put it in during October and it has months.

That matters. Especially now.

Watering needs to become part of the design

After this summer, I’m even more convinced that irrigation should be treated in the same way as paths, lighting and planting. It is part of the garden. It shouldn’t be an afterthought.

The drip line goes in with the plants, not after the first three have died and everyone starts looking around wondering whose fault it is. A properly designed system puts water where the plant actually needs it, consistently and efficiently. It also means nobody needs to spend their July evenings standing in the garden with a hosepipe, wondering whether the hydrangeas are looking slightly offended.

This year’s planting diary is already full, and new design work is currently by waiting list. Which brings me to something I’m genuinely interested in finding out.

Storing winter rain for summer

We have a slightly ridiculous situation with water. In winter we often have more of it than we know what to do with. In summer we sometimes desperately need it. So why aren’t we storing more of the first to use during the second?

The obvious answer is some form of rainwater harvesting. The obvious problem is that the proper systems can cost roughly the same as a small car. And while I’m sure there are people who would happily spend £15,000 storing rainwater, most homeowners would quite reasonably prefer to spend £15,000 on the garden.

A standard 200-litre water butt is useful, but it is not exactly a reservoir. For one modest border, that could be one decent watering. Then it’s gone.

So this is an honest request. If you have found a sensible way of collecting and storing winter rain on a domestic scale, then getting it back out again in July without remortgaging the house, I want to hear about it. Linked water butts. Underground tanks. Something agricultural that I’ve somehow missed.

Email me at hello@mjwgardendesigns.com. The best ideas might make it into a future post, with credit. The worst might make it in too. Probably anonymously.

Your lawn is probably not dead

This is where I can give you some good news. Brown grass after a dry summer is often dormant rather than dead. If it greens up within a couple of weeks of proper rainfall, it was probably fine all along. The thin, patchy areas that stay brown are the ones that need attention.

Don’t rush out and start doing everything because the calendar says October. The trigger is the weather and, specifically, the rain. Once we have had two or three proper soakings, that is when I would tackle the lawn, and I’d do it in this order.

Scarify. Get the dead material out, and I mean get it out properly. A lawn can take more than you think. Rake it harder than feels polite.

Aerate. A summer of baked ground, particularly heavy clay, leaves grass roots with very little air or water movement. Use a fork or a hollow-tine aerator, roughly every 10–15cm.

Top dress. Brush a thin layer of sandy loam into the holes. You’re filling them, not burying the lawn.

Overseed. Around 35g per square metre across the lawn, with more on the bare patches. Then finish with an autumn feed, rather than something high in nitrogen that encourages lots of soft green growth just as winter is arriving.

Seed wants reasonably warm soil. In Cambridgeshire, that generally gives us a useful window in the first half of October, sometimes stretching into the third week if we’re lucky. After that, you’re not really overseeding. You’re feeding the birds.

Once you’ve done it, keep everyone off the lawn for a few weeks. Everyone. That includes the dog. He will not have read this article.

The plant that is in completely the wrong place

Every garden has one. Usually it was planted by someone who was very confident. Occasionally that someone was me. October is when I start looking at the list.

Evergreens are good candidates for moving now, while the soil is still relatively warm and the air is cooler. The box that never sees the light. The yew that has slowly eaten half the border. The shrub that looked perfectly sensible on paper but has spent the last three years making everyone question the original decision.

Move them with as large a root ball as is practical, get them back into the ground quickly and water them in properly. Then water them again.

Deciduous shrubs are better left until November, once the leaves have dropped and the plant has gone properly dormant. Early-summer flowering perennials can be divided now too. Late flowerers and many ornamental grasses are better left until spring. They would rather be disturbed when they are waking up than when they are going to sleep. And, frankly, so would I.

October is the month with the longest reach

None of this is particularly glamorous. There is no October equivalent of the first rose opening in May. Nobody gets excited about aeration. Nobody puts a photograph of a drip line on Instagram and thinks, “What an incredible garden.”

But October reaches further than almost any other month. The lawn you repair now is the lawn you are mowing next May. The border you plant now gets an entire winter to establish before summer arrives. The tree you irrigate properly now has a much better chance of dealing with the next dry spell. And after this summer, I think we should assume there will be one.

So while everyone else is busy tidying things away, cutting everything back and making the garden look finished for winter, I’ll be doing the opposite. I’ll be looking at what needs improving. What needs moving. What needs planting. Where the water is going to come from. And, perhaps most importantly, what I can do now so that next summer isn’t quite such a surprise.

The neighbours won’t notice much difference this month. They will in May.