‘A beautiful garden in May is the very best life can offer. ….. The sheer radiance of the garden, the energy that cannot be supressed or diminished, rides over any weather and fills the garden with a constant, soaring song of delight’.

In case you think I’ve had a glass or two too many, those are the words of Monty Don from his ‘Down to Earth’ book. Typically Monty, full of emotion and even an obsession of all things green.  Okay it may be a bit OTT for you, but the sentiment is surely spot on?

But there’s work to do too.  One job I don’t always get round to soon enough and then regret it for the rest of the year, is to get some supports sorted for those taller floppy perennials. I find getting the right balance between effective support and invisible mechanics is tough.  One of the best descriptions of a well managed mixed border I’ve read is treating the canes, wire and string like the material of a corset: they keep them in good shape but remain unseen.  Getting the supports in place early means they should disappear as the plants grow. That’s the theory anyway.

One of the best and easiest is to put sturdy bamboo canes or sticks around the perennial and then criss cross string backwards and forwards between them to make a kind of makeshift lattice that the emerging plant can grow through.  I have a lovely big stand of really tall lilies (watch out for the red lily beetle by the way) that stay upright with this treatment through even very windy weather.  Some of the National Trust gardens do a similar thing using pea netting tied horizontally to the canes at different heights.

For plants that tend to grow in a clump such as a Japanese anemone or a herbaceous peony, those circular metal supports you just shove into the ground work well. They are attractive enough to be seen too, which is handy as you can leave them in all winter to remind you where they are.  Another version of that is the circular supports that come with separate legs that will slide up and down and the plant gets taller.  They work well for the shorter dahlias, the taller ones with huge heads tend to need robust canes up each stem.

For strappy leaved plants such as crocosmia, some twiggy sticks from hedge and tree prunings popped in through the plant stop them from flopping over and smothering plants around them. 

Or of course the other answer is to grow plants that don’t need staking. The hellebores have been fabulous here this year. They need very little tlc, grow into bigger and bigger gorgeous clumps, flower for ages and don’t need any support at all. Lavender, penstemons, phlox despite their height, phlomis – the list is long.  But a garden without a peony is unthinkable for me. 

Talking of dahlias, I potted them up in some old compost last month to get them growing and will plant them out at the end of the month after checking the weather forecast.  It’s easy to get lulled into a false sense of security if we have a few warm days at this time of year, but tender plants such as dahlias, gingers and cannas, as well as geraniums and many so called bedding plants won’t usually survive a frost. So if you do plant them out, have some horticultural fleece or old curtains at the ready to throw over them if one is forecast.

Take care everyone and enjoy your garden at this glorious time of year.