BBC Gardeners' World July 2021

Discover… how to maximise a tiny plot with our 132-page guide to Small Space Gardening. Buy yours in selected stores until 21 July (from £7.99) or at gardenersworld.com/ gw-special-editions Join us… Treat yourself to a 12-night cruise around the British Isles, with an optional exclusive garden tour package led by GW Associate Editor, David Hurrion. See p113 Learn… Join one of our popular online Masterclasses to help you become a better gardener – whatever your level or experience, and whatever size the plot. gardenersworld.com/ masterclass Save… as you visit gardens this year with our 2021 2 for 1 Entry Card and Guide – order yours for £6.99 by going to bit.ly/GWMay-gw-MG Save even more... Subscribe today and enjoy two years for the price of one, saving 50% – plus extra savings and benefits. Turn now to page 26. Keep up…

Savouring fresh-picked food outdoors in our own gardens is both a pleasure and a reward – and July is a month of plenty. With four out of five of you telling us you’re growing your own food this year, it’s a pleasure that’s in easy reach. To help you make the most of all you’ve grown, we’ve dozens of fresh ways to use your produce to share over the next three issues – starting with tips from the best-selling author of the delicious Roasting Tin series, Rukmini Iyer, on harvesting and preparing this month’s bounty. Getting every bit of goodness and flavour from our homegrown is more than just enjoyable. New research into our immune systems suggests that those working with soil and eating fresh food close to its source are boosting…

“ The summer night is like a perfection of thought ”Wallace Stevens STARS OF THE MONTH Instead of one star plant, we’ve chosen a slice of border to show the variety that this month can offer. July is about strong colours – gingery oranges and fizzing yellows – and look at the shapes that give texture: spires, buds, daisies and bowing blades of grass. A border in full sail. Helenium ‘Red Army’ Divide in spring. Good seedheads. H x S 100cm x 50cm Perovskia ‘Filigran’ Good for pollinators. Aromatic foliage. H x S 1.2m x 60cm Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ Excellent grass and robust. H x S 1.8m x 60cm Achillea ‘Terracotta’ Avoid wet soils. Short-lived perennial. HxS 80cm x 50cm Veronicastrum virginicum ‘Diane’ Best in a rich soil (lots of mulch). H x S 1.3m x 60cm Lythrum salicaria Good in borders…

Cornflower. The name conjures a vision of a very particular shade of clear blue, and one that nearly 400 years ago was said to be “furnishing, or rather pestering, the cornfields”. The wild blue cornflower, Centaurea cyanus, as one of our most common cornfield weeds with yellow corn marigolds and scarlet poppies, must have made the fields sparkle. Of course, improved seed-cleaning techniques and the arrival of selective weedkillers soon wiped out most cornfield weeds, and helped increase the yields of cereals, but the wild cornflower is now enjoying a comeback as a constituent of wildflower seed mixes. We can buy seed of that pure blue separately, but the ‘Classic Fantastic’ mix brings it together with other blue shades, and other individual colours are increasingly popular in borders and for cutting.…

Two garden seats arrived at Longmeadow and on the same day I heard Sarah Raven – who is right about most things – say that the best time to plant outdoor tomatoes was “when it was warm enough to eat supper outside”. For all I know, you may be reading this in the second week of a blistering heatwave, but it is a rare summer that we can eat outside most evenings. For the most part, eating one’s evening meal outside, sipping that last glass as the light is replaced by a warm, velvety dusk, is the memorable exception rather than any kind of rule. Which potentially makes planting out tomatoes a bit of a lottery, but I know what Sarah means. There is a point somewhere around the beginning of…

Joy in a pandemic I’ve been reflecting on what effect the lockdown has had on our family life. Like many others, we have faced challenges we could never have imagined over the past 14 months. However, my overwhelming feeling is one of gratitude for our garden, which has been a place of peace, joy and healing for the whole family. Gardening with my two-year-old daughter became a regular activity. believe she could not have had a more healthy and wholesome educational experience than connecting with nature. More than anything, I hope that her year spent in the garden has given her a love for nature and wildlife that she will nurture throughout her life. Ellie Evans, Cambridge Time to mix up hedgerows I want to put forward a view against monoculture hedges. Over the years, fashions…