Was the rainy summer really so bad?  Let's count our blessings

How was it for you, the summer of 2012?

Gardeners tend to take stock around this time of year and there have been many moans about the terrible weather, but thinking back, it wasn't all bad.  Trees and shrubs planted have never done so well, or worried us so little.

Buying expensive plants and getting them through their first season can be nerve-racking.  

Crocosmia

It was not just trees and shrubs that thrived.  Perennials were amazing.  Huge crocosmia, outsize and flourishing phlox, brilliant aconitum - all plants that I sometimes think I should forego on my thin stony soil, but this year they were in peak condition.  



It's been agreed that it's been a wonderful year for everything - bar annuals and vegetables.

According to a representative of the RHS, the reason why 2012 was so bad for annuals (which include vegetables) and had been disappointing was because conditions for sowing in March were ideal, but April and May were too cold for seedlings to grow and annuals need to make a lot of leaf cover by June to thrive.  The light levels stayed low and leaves were too small to gather any sunlight under the dense cloud cover.

Unfortunately, all the soft growth made this summer would be less weather-resistant if we have a hard winter.  In Philadelphia a shrub will survive much colder weather than here.  Is this because they have such long hot summers?  Hardiness is a complicated subject and it is true that weather in the summer can markedly alter the hardiness of plants.  But the most worrying weather would be a very mild October, followed by severe winter frosts after Christmas, but there's not much we can do about this.   After all, gardening isn't a precise science.

The  gardeners' year starts here in the autumn, with what used to be called the 'back end'.  January is too late for resolutions.  

Although many people dread November, all soggy leaves and brown stems.  It's the time to start looking forrward to the next gardening year.

Next year's bounty from the garden!

Aready it's time for us to plan how next season might be better than this year.  We can't beat the weather and I do hope there'll be more fruit and fewer slugs in 2013.  

But on the whole most seasons have their compensations, even ones like the non-summer of 2012, which has been given the thumbs down by everyone we meet.