Wildlife Watching in the Garden
August is a quiet month in the garden with little to do except general maintenance and wildlife watching. It’s normally a month of long, sunny days and there should still be plenty of nectar and pollen bearing plants in flower for insects.
As summer comes to a close it’s a good time to think about what you can do for wildlife in your garden. Perhaps plant a hedge, create a shady area or dig a pond. If you have already have a pond – or any other water feature – then now is the time to keep it topped up. Rain water collected in water butts is the best, but if you are going to top up with tap water add it little and often rather than in a large quantity all at once.
August is also a good month to carry out pond plant maintenance as it causes the least disruption to spring breeding of amphibians and insects. Submerged oxygenating plants that colonise rapidly will need thinning to stop them chocking the pond. Floating-leaved plants should cover only 30-50 per cent of the water surface so will also need to be thinned out and deadheaded. If you are creating a pond in your garden then don’t forget to leave a small slopping, shallow pebble beach free of plants at the water’s edge that allows creatures to easily get in and out.
Some marginal plants that are found round the edges of ponds are also great options for boggy but sunny areas of a garden, or in damp borders, such as Flag Irises or Arum Lilies. The Flag Iris is an easy plant to grow and native to the UK. It has long mid-green iris leaves and yellow flowers in late spring to early summer which are attractive to bees. The Arum Lily is a striking architectural plant with large, green glossy foliage which, in late spring and early summer, is joined by large, white, hood-shaped flowers.
Apart from pond maintenance, other top jobs for gardeners this month include:
- Prune rambling roses that have finished flowering and tie in the young stems that will bloom next year. Also, tidy up summer growth on roses by cutting back weak flower stems, snipping off old flowerheads and flower stems that impact on the shape of the plant.
- Give evergreen hedges a trim to keep them in shape now that the nesting season is over. Evergreens are popular cover for many songbirds, so do a quick check before you start, to make sure that any birds have gone. Finish off by pulling out weeds growing along the base of the hedge.
- Second-early or main crop potatoes will be ready to harvest this month, but if you want the biggest tubers possible, leave main crops until next month unless foliage is dying off or showing signs of blight.
Plus, here’s what the experts have to say …
August is usually one of the hottest months of the year – making watering essential. Try to use grey water wherever possible, especially as water butts may be running low if it has been a dry summer. It’s also time to prune Wisteria and summer-flowering shrubs such as lavender once they’ve finished flowering.
RHS
August is the time of bumper harvests in all parts of the garden. Lettuces, beans, potatoes and peas are all waiting to be harvested and enjoyed. We are almost in autumn, so take a little time to savour the delights of summer. Water well in dry spells – especially beans, cucumber, marrows, leeks and celery. But watch out for potato and tomato blight, as well as mildew, in warm damp weather
Garden Organic
Often August can feel as though summer is growing weary and jaded. However the one thing that is always constant in the August garden is that the days are growing noticeably shorter and this affects growth, especially of young plants. This means that any seeds to be sown for autumn display or eating should be done as early as possible in the month to give growing seedlings the maximum chance of light.
Monty Don