It’s a lovely time when we leave Spring and enter Summer. Everything is usually at its best at this time of the year. Gardening in summer is a pleasure!
Meteorological summer starts on June 1 and lasts until 31 August. Of course June is also the month of the Summer Solstice – the longest day. Whichever dates you like to use to measure it by, it’s a lovely time of the year!
We know that a lot of you have moved to the coast from inland towns. Gardening by the sea is like learning a whole new language. What will and won’t grow in the harsh, salty environment is a bit of a mystery at first!
Here at Visit Fylde Coast we like gardening. We’ve spent a long time learning what will grow – by trial and error! We’ll share some of that hard-won knowledge with you. Why don’t you share your tips and questions too?
Seaside Gardening in Summer
Before the heat sets in (we hope!) and everything gets leggy and burnt, your garden should be looking lush and green. It’s a good time to enjoy the fruits of your earlier labours and enjoy what you’ve created.
If you fed your lawn and borders they should be looking lush, emerald green and in really good condition. As Alan Titchmarsh always said, when you’ve done some gardening in summer, stand back and ‘Give them a good dose of looking at’.
Problems, Problems, Problems…
We’ll get the bad news over with first! It’s also a time of the year when your garden might suffer too. Mostly because of the Great British Weather…
Wind Burn
We always say that we’re never short of wind here on the Fylde Coast! After all, it’s why there are so many offshore turbines.
However, it’s quite common to have a spell of atrocious, really windy weather in summer. Just at the time of year when your garden is looking lovely. The trees are in leaf, the flowers are blooming, and bang. Here comes the wind. Grrr.
There’s not a lot that you can do about it. It’s a problem that we’ve all got when we garden by the sea. Our best advice is to swear under your breath… Then clip off the worst of the burnt bits, give your plants a drink of water and a feed. It might be a good idea to spray them down with clean water to wash the salt off the worst affected areas.
It’s remarkable how quickly things do rejuvenate. If you cut the dead flowers and leggy growth off perennials they will also reward you with another later blooming. Sit back and wait, and your garden should miraculously spring back to life. Then keep your fingers crossed that it doesn’t happen again…
Drought…
Of course the other big problem in summer is a lack of water. Most plants will cope surprisingly well with a lack of water – once they are established. It’s the new ones that you really need to keep an eye on.
If your garden is densely planted, or if you’ve got a lot of lush bedding plants, it’s a good idea to try and rig something up. Grey water from washing up and rainwater from the roof are both excellent ways to keep your flowers blooming – without using drinking water from the tap. Rig up a water butt to collect rain from the roof – you’ll be surprised how quickly it fills and how much easier it makes your watering.
or Too Much Rain
The weather rarely seems to be just right, does it? If it isn’t windy, or a drought, there’s too much rain. Unseasonably wet weather in summer will have several effects on your garden. The most obvious one is that many of the plants and flowers will be dashed. Plants like peony and roses – which are delightful when they burst their blooms – will get wrecked by the rain. Ours certainly are.
A less obvious side effect of all the rain is that it washes the nutrients out of your soil. After a few deluges, your plants will be ready for a square meal, especially if you are going to expect them to flower again. There are a number of ways that you can feed them, depending on your choice. After a lot of rain, while the soil is wet, I would probably go for something organic like chicken manure or fish. blood and bone. I do use rose fertiliser too. In very early Spring I scatter it on everything and find that to be excellent, and it also creates a lot of flowers.
You can also use a soluble feed, something like Miracle Grow. Those dispensers on the end of the hosepipe are very good. It not only feeds the roots but it also gives the foliage a feed too – the nutrients are absorbed through the leaves which creates quick growth. You might be better doing this when the soil has dried up a bit!
Growing Things in a Seaside Garden
Take a look at this post that’s dedicated to the subject of Seaside Gardening.
Summer Gardening Jobs
For gardeners, the annual jobs that we do outside are a soothing rhythm throughout the year. Each year we enjoy seeing things burst to life and the pleasures (and tasks) that each season brings.
Tidying Spring Bulbs
Early summer is the time to get the daffodil tops and spring bulb leaves cleared away. They should be well and truly over by now. Cut them off or just pull them away and then compost or put them in the green bin.
Making Compost
It’s also a good time of year to have a go at making your own compost, as the heat from warming weather speeds things along. The trick is to get a good mix of dry and wet material so that you don’t end up with slop or dry sticks. If you’re impatient, like me, you can use a shredder to speed things along, and can make mulch from trimmings in only a few weeks.
Pests and Diseases
We don’t have too much trouble in our garden with pests – because we attract the birds and wildlife and they clean up for us. By not using chemicals and sprays in your garden, natural predators will clean up the problems for you and make a job less!
Have you noticed that the Fylde Coast seems to have a Ladybird invasion in June? There are dozens of them everywhere, munching their way through every aphid in sight. Of course they’re welcome visitors!
Did you know? A large number of ladybirds is called a ‘Loveliness’
Ants
We’ve always had a lot of ants in our back garden. In fact there seem to be a lot of them around here. We’ve even seen armies of them marching around in local car parks! We’ve never done anything about them – we just leave them to be anty and do what they do. I’ve noticed that they do seem to take advantage of aphids on some plants though – fascinating to watch…
Did you know? That ants farm aphids for the honeydew that they produce? And they eat the unproductive aphids too!
Slugs and Snails
We seem to have a lot of slugs and snails in our garden, maybe they come here on holiday! Watch out for them in wet undergrowth after rain, as they will no doubt be munching through your leaves. By far and away the best form of control is frogs and hedgehogs – these natural predators will munch their way through them. Adding a wildlife pond doesn’t just attract frogs but a whole host of other insects, birds and animals. There’s more about gardening for wildlife here.
If you suffer with slugs in your garden, please don’t use ordinary chemical slug pellets! They are lethal to wildlife and kill hedgehogs and other mammals. Many pets have died through eating them too. They cause fitting, extreme illness and death. If you haven’t got frogs or hedgehogs, just pick them off and dispose of them by your choice of method. Apparently if you throw them over the garden fence they come back! You could also chuck them in the green bin (which is what we do) – they can eat what they want to in there!
Trimming Hedges
Tidying up hedges is one of those gardening in summer jobs. They start to get a bit raggy looking now. Just make sure there aren’t any birds nesting in there, before you wade in with the shears.
A trim at this time of year when they are growing strongly will focus the growth into a denser hedge for the years to come. It also cuts the burnt bits off too! Just bear in mind that if you cut the flowers off Hawthorn or other fruiting trees, you won’t get any berries!
Hawthorn is a great hedging plant or tree for the coast. New growth does burn when caught by late winds, but it quickly recovers. It’s hardy enough to tolerate the head-on winds on the seafront rock gardens at St Annes – if you’ve noticed it here you’ll see that it grows low and hugs the ground, pruned by the wind, but full of flowers.
Dead Heading
One of the most important things to do in summer is deadheading. Cut the spent blooms off plants and they’ll reward you with more flowers.
Your roses will also bloom repeatedly if you keep snipping off the dead flowers. Whether they’re climbers or shrub roses, take them back to a leaf joint and you’ll be rewarded with more buds. If you are given, or want to buy a pot plant for someone, it’s always worth buying those tiny little potted roses. When you’ve enjoyed the best of them indoors you can plant them out in the garden. You’ll be rewarded with a little rose bush that flowers every year and a lovely memory.
Staking
Keep an eye on floppy plants at this time of year. Make sure that they are staked and supported, especially when it keeps raining. If they are dashed flat before you get to them they will struggle to look right again if you try to truss them up.
Tying In
Another job for later in the summer is tying in rose and shrub stems, horizontally. It’s a great way to get an amazing amount of flowers.
Pull long stems of climbing roses down horizontally and tie them in to the fence or other plants. It stimulates the growth of new shoots all along the branch, they then individually flower. Imagine an espalier fruit tree and aim for the same kind of thing. You’ll end up with a well branched plant and prolific flowers at a height where you can enjoy them. It really does work.
If you’ve got gaps in your hedging to fill, let the sides and fronts grow long stems. When they’re long enough you can pull them sideways to fill the gaps, and tie them in with string.
Lawn Care
Your lawn will probably also be ready for some fertiliser too. How do you look after your lawn? Do you go for bowling green, weed-free perfection? Or a softer, more natural and chemical-free sward?
Traditional Lawns
If you go down the traditional lawn route you probably fed your grass in Spring with a chemical weed and feed product. So it will have grown like mad, lush and green for a few months and will be starting to slow down by now. If it’s been raining a lot it should be bright green. If the weather’s been warm it will look parched. By July it will getting ready for some more nutrients. Again, there are loads of products that you can use, some are much more complicated than others.
The easiest one that I’ve found is called ‘Aftercut’. It’s a granular feed that comes in a box and is on sale in most supermarkets. You just sprinkle it on straight after mowing and that’s it. It’s another product which will work more effectively when the soil is damp, but you don’t have to water it in and it won’t burn the lawn. Dead easy. There’s more about lawn care here.
Natural Looking Lawn
As people are becoming more environmentally aware, more of us are ditching the chemicals and instead opting to go with whatever nature chooses. Lots of us (me included) are ditching bright green, weed free perfection and instead allowing the ‘weeds’ and wildflowers in. This way there’s no need for artificial fertilisers and an increase in flowers, pollen and nectar for insects and bees.
It’s also much easier too! This type of lawn needs mowing less often and with the blades a little higher. A less fertile soil will mean that you get more wildflowers, so no need to apply (and buy) all those chemical treatments. Just cut it all down and remove the clippings at the end of the summer.
Scorch Marks
Have you got a pet who wees on your lawn? You might also end up with their brown patches too! Depending on the size of the pet and the size of their bladder, if you just leave the patch it will eventually recover. If they wee on wet grass it’s not as bad – if they wee on dry grass and you see them, you can water it in to reduce the effect. Actually, if you did that you’d end up with an emerald green lawn from the nitrogen! If you’ve got a big dog with a big bladder then the lawn is going to be a problem. You might be best off putting your thinking cap on about their toilet arrangements!
Plants that Grow at the Coast
We’ve killed a LOT of plants over the years, in the hope that they will tolerate the exposed conditions of our garden. Experience has taught me that the normal rules from books and TV don’t always apply, and we’ve killed many plants, including several grisellina that are sold are as a coastal shrub and certainly don’t like Cleveleys! The hedge around the play area at Affinity Lancashire leaves me green with envy. They must be slightly more sheltered even though it doesn’t feel like it. It’s green, dense and enviable!
But the ones that have been successful have been really successful. And in many instances it’s the plants that you perhaps wouldn’t expect. Things like carnations – buy scented varieties and fill the air with perfume! We’ve got a carnation plant in our garden that starts flowering in about April/May and with regular deadheading goes on until early winter. When it’s mild it can even flower right through. The scent from it is stunning, so much so, we’ve added to our collection with many other plants, as they stand the most vile weather you could imagine and perfume the evening air all summer round.
You might have also seen bluebells all along the Fylde Coast, particularly at Lytham, St Annes and Fleetwood where open land comes right up to the edge of the coast. The moral of the story being that if they grow in the wild, they’ll grow in your garden!
Weeds
Why do weeds seems to be able to grow where nothing else can? They’ll be growing with gay abandon right now. As they say ‘a stitch in time saves nine’ and if you get them out before they seed, you’ll stop a whole boatload of trouble for next year.
Dandelions and docks need to come out by the root or they will grow back, and annual weeds can be hoed off. Then there’s mare’s tail – ouch – another subject for another page! Read this post about how to deal with mare’s tail.
Weeds in the Lawn
If you used a weed, feed and moss killer product in spring, you should have got rid of the pesky things in your lawn. No doubt there will be an odd persistent one, or a new one sprouting. You can take dandelions up by hand, making sure to get the root out. That’s if you decide not to embrace them – dandelions are a fabulous early source of food for bees.
Did you know? That dandelions provide a welcome early food source for bees as they come out of hibernation?
I’m really not a fan of chemicals in the garden. But finer weeds like clover might benefit from a spray. You can get the spray dispensers of ready mixed lawn weedkiller in most shops with gardening ranges and you just squirt it on the weed. Make sure you use a lawn one as they are formulated to not kill the surrounding grass. DON’T use ordinary weedkiller or you’ll end up with a dead patch! Or you could do like I’ve done and embrace the clover! I’ve actually seeded it in my back garden lawn to create a pink and white carpet of flowers!
Summer is a lovely time in your garden, so make sure you take the time to look and enjoy it!
Holiday Plant Care
It’s a problem isn’t it – you’ve been tending to your garden and it’s looking lovely. Just in time for your summer holiday! While no one’s going to lavish the same care and attention to your plants as you will, here are some holiday plant care tips and tricks. Hopefully they’ll make the task easier for your friend or neighbour too!
Time for Sniffles…
Gardening in Spring might also come with a mild to moderate dose of the sniffles if you’re allergic to tree pollen. Spring heralds the start of the hayfever season for millions of people. Here’s some ideas about living with hayfever.
Look after the Wildlife
Can you leave a corner of your garden to the wildlife? Leave some weeds to grow and flower, twigs to collect on the ground and piles of ‘stuff’ to form a handy home. All kinds of insects will thank you for it, and in turn they make a meal for birds and mammals.
It’s also the time of year when bees might be struggling too. They feel the heat and drought just like we do. If you see a bee walking slowly and looking a bit confused, you could save its life. All you need is a drop of sugar water and a bit of patience. Your reward is seeing it buzz off to pollinate for another day! Here’s how to save a bees life.
Work in Progress
Much like our gardens, this page is a work in progress! I’m sure there are lots of things that I’ve forgotten, which I’ll add as I remember. Some useful pages are included below but there are more in the main gardening section. If there’s anything you want to add, just leave a comment. Happy spring gardening!
- Plants that grow at the coast
- Gardening in Spring
- Gardening in Summer
- Autumn Gardening
- Gardening in Winter
- Seaside Gardening
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