Those of you who live and garden outside the UK and Europe may have heard about our recent stormy weather. This has not only brought havoc to gardens, but flooded many homes and even lives have been lost. Our rather unreliable public transport systems has been thrown into chaos, power disrupted and insurance companies estimate the final bill could well run into billons. These used to be called freak weather spells, but not any more.
I have been gardening for over twenty years now and have lived here all my life, but never in all that time do I remember rain like this. Now don’t get me wrong here, I along with thousands of other gardeners in the UK are more than used to our variable weather, in fact most of us would say our climate is one of the most favourable in the world for gardening and successfully growing a very wide range of plants. But this recent weather has yet again underlined the increasing threat of global warming to the climates of the whole world.
Just to illustrate the point, I cannot remember any period in any season where rain has fallen in such quantities or over such a long period. We have had almost continuous rain now for around six weeks, the sun has been seen, but only very briefly, usually between very heavy showers. October in Britain can be a lovely month for soft autumn sunshine and warmth, with gorgeous colours of orange and fiery red tints. Not this year though! Rain, very high wind and even snow, has been the depressing and monotonous routine for this particular October. We are fast developing our very own monsoon season to rival the best in the world.
I cannot even remember the last time I had a full day in the garden, which I can only guess must have been back in September. My wallflowers are still not fully planted and are sitting soaked and slowly rotting in cardboard boxes outside. Those that I have managed to plant are not fairing much better with all this water. Adding insult to injury, my ageing wooden barrels have now chosen this very moment to collapse, finally giving up the unequal struggle of constraining saturated compost for weeks on end. Leaf clearing and tidying up borders has been out of the question. In short, the garden rather resembles a swamp, with rotting vegetation everywhere.
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