Work for the week

BEDDING: Remove damaged and blown blooms from summer bedding (especially if you grow cosmos or petunias) so that new flushes are encouraged fairly fast.

All in all, summer in the garden can be a busy time irrespective of what the weather brings. Of course the outstanding feature of summer gardening is that occupation can always be found there. The warmth and brightness that summer evenings bring means that pottering around becomes a pleasant occupation. No idle people are happy, but gardeners with mind and fingers busy, relax so easily that their cares are soon forgotten.

CATMINT: Catmint is flopping all over the borders. Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’ has been particularly prone to damage recently, no doubt due to the extraordinary weather conditions of late. Cats too, it seems, like to loll about in its scented shoots causing untold damage in the process. In fertile soils, this June wonder grows tall and naturally tends to open up in the middle, especially following rain. One way to stop this is to cut it back by half with shears in April just before it starts to go into serious flowering mode.