I have just walked into the garden, where I found myself lost in new growth. The sweetcorn is standing 9ft high after the heat, and the self-sown sunflowers that have taken over the salad beds must be easily more than twice my height. They look down on me, huge discs heavy with seed and gently creaking as they catch the breeze. The runner beans have jumped their tripods and are making their way skyward in fabled fashion. I love it.
The loftiness is not confined to the vegetable garden. The colour cacophony of the dahlia beds is punctured by a lone giant. Dahlia campanulata came as an innocent-looking cutting last year and stayed in the ground over the winter because its vast tubers were already beyond lifting. The stems are as tropical in appearance as any plant gets in this country. They are muscular and ribbed and bolt skyward to what must be the best part of 15ft. The lush foliage clasps itself to the stem in a dramatic articulation of engineering.
You have to marvel at the dahlia’s feat and not worry about the teetering flower buds held far above you. It will be interesting to see if they will make it this year with a hot summer behind them, but they are perilously late. I’m going to move the brute once the tops are turned to mush by the first frosts and find it a home with the figs against the warm wall of the barn.
Because there is so much open sky here, in contrast to the studio garden in London, I made a decision to play with lofty perennials to give me some scale. I have always loved them for the drama they provide and for the fact that they do so in just one season. In my stock beds I am experimenting to see if there are plants that go up but not out, so that they can be used in more confined conditions.
Vernonia fasciculata, a late-flowering self-supporting perennial from the prairies, is injecting rich purple among Rudbeckia laciniata. The rudbeckia, which needs staking if it is not to topple, holds the light in its cloud of gold flower. This is all going on above your head so you need to leave room among the giants for things to not feel claustrophobic.
Elegant Aster umbellatus takes no more space than a slender man, with flowers held in a creamy plateau at the top of finely foliaged stems. I have it alongside a perennial liquorice. Glycyrrhiza yunnanensis has fine, pea-like leaves and demure clusters of flower, but the main attraction is the rattle-shaped seedpods which are covered in golden hairs and ripen to cinnamon brown as the autumn advances. I plan to plant it close to Molinia arundinacea “Windspiel”, a grass that grows to 8ft and looks wonderfully transparent in the autumn breeze.
Get growing
Choose perennials that don’t need staking or stake plants that are inclined to topple early in the season so that they can grow into their support. The results of late staking always look bunched.
Email Dan at dan.pearson@observer.co.uk
