GARDENS
Should we prepare our gardens for future heatwaves?
Many plants suffered this summer, but don’t give up on them just yet, writes Stephen Anderton
The Times
I bet you wished for more shade in the garden this summer. Bet your plants did too. So many of them really struggled, often because we tend to grow shade-loving plants in too much sun. We get away with it most of the time, but then comes a dry heatwave like this summer’s and they frazzle. My rodgersias were crisp as poppadums.
So, should we be ripping out soft shade-lovers and banishing them to the darkest and hopefully dampest recesses of the garden? Come to that, should we be ripping out so much of what we traditionally grow — sun or shade — and choosing drought-tolerant plants instead? Well, it’s not that simple. If something has died, completely, it would make sense not to rush
