August Container Garden Tour & Topiary Trim, Cosmos ‘Cupcakes Blush’ & Many Lovely Growing Things!

Welcome to our small garden in Kent, South East England, Zone 8. It’s good to have your company on an early morning tour of seasonal highlights across the container display and hydrangea borders. Foliage plants in pots such as eucalyptus and smokebush add a lush backdrop, maximising the impact of fabulous flowers including dreamy and delicious Cosmos ‘Cupcakes Blush’. This subtly captivating annual grows very well in pots and is beloved by bees. I’ll show how regular deadheading of our cosmos, dahlias and roses is important to extend the blooming season, as well as using strategies to water wisely in the current drought. As earlier flowering hydrangeas fade to an antique shade, others are reaching their prime, in tandem with the ‘Red Windsor’ apples ripening on the container-grown fruit tree. We hope the birds leave us plenty to harvest! Next, we revisit the ‘lavender lop’ of July, when I took the plunge and pruned into hardwood, reducing the leafy ‘Folgate’ lavender bushes to twiggy mounds. Happily, there is already considerable leafy growth erupting from bare, hardwood stems, softening the formerly stark appearance. Hopefully, the bushes will rejuvenate into the tighter, more shapely form they once provided. Meanwhile, I give a light, late-summer trim to the quartet of boxwood spheres that punctuate the lavender rondel, and share some advice on this truly satisfying and rather therapeutic job. But first I have to make sure there are no unexpected inhabitants hidden inside! Finally, we leave you with a medley of pretty plants, busy pollinators and a cute sleepy carder bee.Thank you for joining us.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Hummingbird Hawk Moth & Intro
0:23 Early morning beauty
0:52 Dahlia ‘Honka Fragile’
1:13 Cosmos ‘Cupcakes Blush’
2:47 Vary container heights for impact
3:40 Cosmos ‘Double Click Cranberries’
4:00 Calibrachoa ‘Pink Lemonade’
4:48 Deadheading
5:37 Salvia ‘Rockin’ Blue Suede Shoes’
6:11 Favourite Dahlia ‘Lou Farman’
6:53 Drought & Watering Tips
9:11 Antique Hydrangeas & fresh blooms
10:14 Apple Tree ‘Red Windsor’
10:48 Scots Pine ‘Chantry Blue’ & Sawfly larvae
12:17 Eucalyptus gunnii foliage
13:55 Lavender lop: pruning update
15:17 Trimming the boxwood topiary
16:18 Who lives in a house like this?
18:47 Thank you, friends

ATTRIBUTIONS WITH THANKS

Boar by Anastasiya Dalenka
https://unsplash.com/photos/a-large-black-bear-standing-on-top-of-a-forest-floor-thK5wScC9Mk
Goats by Önder Andinç
https://unsplash.com/photos/a-herd-of-goats-on-a-rocky-hillside-jKKYzQd9m-w

[Music] Good morning. It’s lovely to have your company. Thank you for joining us on the mid August tour of our small garden here in Kent, Southeast England. [Music] In the blissful early morning stillness before the sun breaches the rooftops and floods the garden with light, there is a dreamlike and painterly quality to the plant panorama. I think the painterly effect comes as much from leaf texture as colorful flowers like the pointerist blue gray dorbs of the eucalyptus foliage behind the dia and cosmos cupcake has these delicate brush strokes of fresh green fernie fronds. [Music] The rich plummyyle leafed smoke bush has sice highlights brightening the leaf margins giving the effect of illumination even when there are no direct sun rays as if an impressionist painter has applied this skillful artist’s technique. So, if you are creating a late summer or autumn container display, my top tip would be to include foliage plants as well as focusing on gorgeous flowers. I used to dedicate the entire patio container garden to flowering annuals and perennials. Then I realized less is more when there’s foliage galore. In other words, by including more plants selected purely for their foliage qualities, this not only adds layers of texture, depth, and interest to the arrangement, but the leafy backdrop creates an impression of floral abundance by acting as a stage set, pulling attention towards the main flower players. I will explore this idea later in the video, but now let’s continue our fresh and early morning tour before the day heats up to the predicted 30°. This is our view from the dining room entering the garden through the patio doors. We like to vary the heights of containers giving a sense of undulation and the feel of a loosely curated collection rather than rigidly imposed height gradients. In this way, not every floral feature reveals itself immediately, which helps the space feel larger and creates anticipation. One has to explore a little to appreciate every corner. [Music] Hallelujah. [Music] [Music] [Music] This cosmos is another delicious cupcake blush, only without much blush to the white icing. Deadheading all our cosmos regularly directs energy towards growth and abundant flowers rather than seed production. By taking the stem back to the next leaf, they will produce successional blooms for longer [Music] cuts. [Music] And of course, we’re deadheading ders and roses, too. [Music] [Music] for me. It’s impossible not to feel infused with a sense of deep joy at the sight of Dia Lou Farman. The bloom is somehow innocently childlike yet stylishly sophisticated, all in one delightful package. Its only flaw is that slugs and snails find the foliage and flowers irresistible. We are experiencing the driest summer on record for 50 years here in England. And this has definitely reduced the gastropod population compared to 2024 when I was moving this container up onto the metal lattis garden table every single night in a bid to keep the snails away after sundown. So, the dry weather has helped in this respect, but it brings plenty of other challenges. We’ve been under a hose pipe ban for weeks because our reservoir supplies are incredibly low. And here, our water butts are empty. So, every drop of gray water and mains water is really precious. Plants grown in containers are especially vulnerable to temperature and moisture extremes. So for thirsty plants and some of our thirstiest include large leafd salvas and melanths major placing saucers under pots collects all the moisture that would otherwise trickle down through drainage holes after watering. This will soon be drawn back up again by the roots from the saucer. When the drought breaks, I’ll set the saucers aside. A mulch of bark, slate, or horicultural gravel can also help retain moisture. I also need some moisture. There is negligible rain forecast for the next Fortnite and I’ve run out of sauces, so I am resorting to Blu-Tack aka Sticky Buddy. I’m stretching it to increase malleability, but then I think to actually read the instructions. Just have to warm it in your hands. So, those instructions did not say push firmly into drainage holes, but that’s what I’m doing. And I’ll leave the putty in place on the bottom of the pot for the next two weeks at least because I want as little water loss as possible since these plants are drying out so quickly and looking a little stressed. The rising sun is moving its slow motion tide of gold further into the garden. So, let’s continue the tour. [Music] I appreciate the way the pink lollipop hydrangees are fading to antiqu terra cotta, the color of the cretan urns. In the center of the raised bed, a later flowering variety of hydrangeanger called magical revolution is just reaching delicate pink perfection. When selecting different hydrangeanger cultivars, it’s good to think about early, middle, and late flowering varieties to extend the season of color. But to be honest, here it has been rather a happy accident that some are fading in August just as others are coming into their prime. Our [Music] characterful red Windsor apple tree is laden with fruit. I have thinned the apples once already, but the crop is still quite heavy for a pot constrained plant, and that may result in sparse bud formation next year, but it looks so fairy tale fantastic. I’m just going to enjoy the visual and ultimately culinary pleasures to the max. And keep fingers crossed for next year, which probably isn’t good horicultural practice, but sometimes we just have to live in the moment. Our beautiful little blue Scots pine has done well to recover. Not only was it extensively defoliated by disease, but then many of the remaining healthy needles were eaten this spring by sawfly larvai and they are rather scary because they look perfectly still and then suddenly they do this. I removed them all and left them in the bird bath for the bird’s consumption. So, the lost pine needles were ultimately all part of a wider food chain. [Music] [Music] [Music] Continuing the earlier theme of foliage plants as a powerful living green foil that can intensify the impact of surrounding flowers, this attractive eucalyptus is a perfect example. I gently pulled four stems together with garden wire, creating a leafy obelisk. [Music] Last year, this was a tall and spindly container grown tree which was purposefully reduced to a stump to encourage luxurant new growth. And in April, the fresh leafage emerged from hardwood in flickering red flames, but gradually crossed to the opposite side of the color spectrum, transforming into gorgeously gau leaves. Green and gray foliage plants also act as an intermediary between different colored blooms in the space. So, should you ever find two flower colors rather jarring together, green foliage placed between them will stylishly buffer the impact. [Music] These large gray green eucalyptus leaves perfectly highlight buds, blooms, and filigree foliage. And in our summer heatwave, they add a refreshingly cool tone and icy sensibility to the glare of the sun and surroundings. At the end of July, I wanted to revitalize our leggy folgate English lavender bushes by cutting directly into the hardwood immediately after flowering finished in an attempt to catalyze new compact growth to restore the bush’s formally dense and shapely form. There is no absolute guarantee of success with this method and the bare stems have been rather jolting to the gaze at a time when the rest of the garden is so full and leafy. But progress 3 weeks on now is promising. You can see all the newly emerged bright green leafage in contrast to the grayer toned existing foliage. There was some immediate leaf dieback on the thinner, less established stems. However, the mature woody stems are visibly bursting into greenery. Any twiggy bits that don’t regenerate can be pruned out next spring. Now, I could have been bolder and cut back even further into the old stems, leaving a smaller hardwood frame, but I did want to try and retain a sense of structure in this central garden focal point. There has been an explosion of germinated oxales seeds in the bed. They must have been silently biting their time in the soil under bushes. And then once stems were pruned back, a combination of exposure to direct sunlight and the moisture I’m providing by watering triggered mass germination. Always in the garden, we find that if you change one thing, there’s an unexpected consequence. Despite rather liking the vision of a purple tinged oxalis carpet under the lavender, these can develop competitive taproots once mature. So I weeded them out. The quartet of evergreen boxwood walls that provide smart punctuation points in the central rondel require a much less drastic trim than the lavender. First, I encourage the wildlife to leave the bushes so nothing is harmed by the blades. The dense boxwoods are full of insects like ladybirds, moths, and crickets. Frogs come for the insects. And once we even found a grassnake curled up inside one of the balls. Grassnakes come for the frogs. So, I always check who’s at home and encourage them to pop out for a bit while I renovate their leafy abode. This is such a satisfying task, even though the shears aren’t as sharp as I’d like, because a really sharp blade makes a very clean cut rather than tearing the leaf and lessens the chance of disease. I will be watering these plants afterwards because hydration helps reduce the stress on the plant. It is fine to give boxwood a light cut at the end of summer, but any substantial pruning is best done in late spring before the flush of new growth. Try to choose a spell of dry weather because pathogens like blight thrive in wet conditions and the plant is more susceptible to infection immediately after pruning. These four balls are unusual in that we bought them already trained into little spheres. Most of the other boxwood topi here I have grown and shaped from cutings or tiny juvenile plants. This is just a light trim, but boxwood and English lavender both regenerate well from hard pruning, probably due to some environmental reason in their evolutionary history, such as recovery from frequent animal damage through grazing or stem breakage. I’m periodically stepping back to check the shape looks good and I’m happy with the finish. [Music] [Music] Maybe you notice the two elegantly whimsical boxwood spirals in the urns either side of the raised bed. They need time to fully establish, but we love them. However, there’s a bit of a backstory, and I will save that till next time. so I can share with you the entire tale. Thank you for joining us on this August tour. We hope you’re enjoying late summer garden time with all the jewels of the season and bountiful harvesting. And until next time, we wish you all flowerful times and nature soothed minds. [Music] Cuts.