I may have said this before, but I love this month. On September the first, I celebrate my anniversary of coming here – starting my 29th year this year. Every year, some day in September, usually around the second or third week, I walk into our courtyard first thing in the morning, which has three large box balls. They were planted in 1997 and although clipped every July, have grown steadily bigger and bigger. On this one September day, these box balls are strung with hundreds of cobwebs all over their surface and strung between them. It is always a morning heavy with dew, the air just slightly chilly, a touch of mist and the sun starting to appear, making these countless threads sparkle like diamonds. It is a magical moment.
September moves summer gently into autumn. The destination into winter may not be where we want to go, but the journey there is always a joy. It is a month of calm tinged with loss and that gentle sadness intensifies the preciousness of the present moment. The plants in our borders that have given us such pleasure over the summer are beginning to fade away to make room for the last harrumph of flowers before we drift into glorious autumn.
It only needs the first frost – which can come in late September to make me realise how precious it is to have flowers this month. Of this small band the salvias here at Columbine are now shining the brightest.
I say ‘the salvias’ as though we have a large collection of them. We do not – although Hew and I did come home with five more after we attended a St. Elizabeth Hospice thank you party held at Katie’s Garden Plants near Woodbridge last week. But we do have a few different flowering types. My favourite is Salvia ‘Amistad’ – it’s a real star with unusually large, deep purple flowers with an almost-black stem. And it flowers for ages. Salvia ‘Blue Enigma’ is another goodie we have here with flowers that are a gleaming satin blue covered in velvety down. We have also added a few salvias to our new walled garden – Salvia ‘Cherry Lips’ and ‘Amethyst Lips’.
If you want a true blue salvia, then S. patens is the best one. It has wonderful pale green leaves and the royal-blue flowers are carried in pairs. To ensure our salvias survive the winter, I dig the plants up each November, cut them back hard, pot them up and put them in the greenhouse to rest – protected from frost. We also have some growing permanently in pots, so I simply lift the whole pot and pop it in the greenhouse.
Kate Elliott came to Columbine Hall in 1997 when she was sixteen. She is now head gardener but also helps with managing the property generally and in conducting guided tours.