It’s not just the roses that are loving this summer. The pubs are having a field day on their pavement extensions; clear proof of global warming. Ten years ago a pint outside huddled near the door constituted London summer. Now they have built permanent terraces on the pavement and in parking spaces. Do they pay parking charges?
Kensington smells of the “Confederate Jasmine” that has become a signature climber on its garden walls. The name was given to Trachelospermum Jasminoides because it grows south of the Mason Dixon Line, the frontier of the Confederacy in the American Civil War. In this street it lushes out so far from a garden wall that you have to make a detour round it. Its variegated form scrambles over the little balustrades across our garden, while I cut off shoots three feet long.
Warmth is what plants want to speed their growth, even more than water. It’s not just roses that are growing fit to bust. And flowering as we’ve never seen them before. Everything from our lemon tree in its pot to the creeping campanula that has become a London weed is jutting out shoots twice the normal length covered with flowers. Agapanthus is almost arborescent. Two blue-flowering bushes I specially treasure are painting the garden the colour that is rare in summer: Lycianthes (alias Solanum) rantonnettii is tall enough to shade the greenhouse and Acnistus (alias Iochroma) australis dangles its elegant soft-blue bulbs, fit for a painting of fairies.
There is a downside to these exotic excesses: an ugly rash of banana plants dwarfing front gardens with this gross and tatty leaves. Not everything you could grow is beautiful.
