How Wet Is It?

How wet is it?

Every year we seem to be getting wetter and wetter. I do not have any weather data, but I do wonder if we are having more rain, less frequently, which is obviously leading to flooding.

I live in the desert area of the UK, and we are still struggling with flood water. Maybe in less ‘dry’ areas you are more used to it.

In the garden, our lawns are squelchy, the beds are sticky and some of the plants are really not enjoying sitting in water.

Is there anything we can do about it? This is a very loaded question, it depends on where you live, how much rain you have, where does it runoff to, are you near a river or lake?

Nonetheless, we want our gardens to look good in the summer when we can sit out in them and enjoy hearing the buzz and tweet of nature. So what should we be doing right now. As long as you try to keep off the wettest areas, the areas where you leave footprints and you can see how you compact the soil. You may be able to get some cutting back done.

This area of garden is always the worst affected in the rain and quite often I cannot walk on it at all without ruining the soil structure.

This time of year is a bit of a balance in the garden, what can we cut back and what should we leave in case of frost and nesting insects. Well, if you have a wisteria, and you haven’t already, now is the last opportunity to cut it back to two buds. This will keep it under control and will encourage lots of flowers.

You can still prune roses, and soon you can give your Sarcococca a light shaping trim, once it has completely finished flowering.

Some of you will have left some perennial seedheads, to help feed the birds and house insects over winter. These can be cut back now, or you can leave them, if they aren’t too untidy, for another week or two.

But when it is as wet as it has been lately, all jobs in the garden can wait a little while. So find a plant catalogue, or your favourite book and sit with a steaming cup of tea and wait it out.

Summer is just round the corner.