If you’re at all like us, you’re about ready to throw up your hands and turn your voices to the sky in extravagant exhortation to the god of rain in the hopes that he will take pity on us and let loose a precious drop or three of that life-sustaining but sadly lacking liquid. I personally am envisioning a blissful, blustery fortnight of a lovely, steady, drenching soak right down to the very tips of the roots of our most substantial trees. Right now, as I look out on the borders and gardens, it seems like what hasn’t bolted has grown to some monstrous, straggly proportion and is littered with spent blossoms and forlorn-looking leaves. One is sorely tempted at this point in a season like this to say the hell with it and let nature take its unpretty course. This, of course, would be exceedingly foolish and it pays for all of us at moments like this to remember who we are, hike up our Wellies, and climb right back onto that currently uncooperative horticultural horse. We are not quitters and we will have the last word. Therefore: what?

Well, the first thing to do is to get back down off that horse, trundle off to the garden shed, drag out your hoses and sprinklers and give some sustenance to the worst victims. Forget the lawn: let it go the gold of prairie grass: it’ll come back as it gets wetter. Instead, give your attentions to any tree that shows signs of stress or drooping or yellowing leaves. Drag the hose over to its roots and just let it run full tilt for a good half hour, keeping in mind that the water’s going to have to permeate a good four or five feet of soil to do any good at all. Secondly, give your attentions to any groupings of shrubs or established perennials that are looking the least bit forlorn. Again, anything with an established root system is going to be overlooked entirely by any superficial watering such as that supplied by your typical lawn sprinkler, which probably only permeates to about six inches an hour, so take the time to stand there, hose in hand, and give each root system its due.

The next thing to do is to get out a good pair of clippers, some garden twine and a bundle of bamboo stakes, throw them into your wheelbarrow, and start doing some aesthetic damage control, particularly in areas like your perennial beds and the vegetable garden if you have one.
In the vegetable garden, if it’s bolted or spent (lettuce… dill… broccoli… corn… cilantro…), yank it out and re-seed with a fall crop of cold-hearty cultivars. Remember to keep these newly seeded patches moist as tender seedlings will fry in a second : a watering every day will be necessary until they’ve got a couple of sets of true leaves on them. If it’s grown into an unkempt, disheveled thicket (mint… lemon balm… New Zealand spinach… sorrel…), hack it back to within its originally prescribed bounds. Also, stake up tall specimens like pepper plants, eggplants, and Brussels sprouts to keep them from prostrating themselves too abjectly. You’ll be amazed how a couple of hours of work in this regard can turn an overgrown eyesore into something that at least has a nodding acquaintance with neat and orderly.


In the borders, follow the same game plan. Deadhead and cutback anything that’s over. Right now, that’s been meaning the big stands of shasta daisy, hollyhocks, stachys, and a good deal of the phlox. Use your aesthetic judgement on what’s left. If it’s sprawling, stake it up. It it’s too out of control to stake, reshape the stand, cutting back the most unruly culprits, then stake it. This has been particularly effective for those alarmingly tall stands at the back of the borders of things like Joe Pye weed (eupatorium maculatum) and purple loosestrife (lythrum salicaria).

At the front of the border, trim up anything that’s grown leggy and is over-spilling the path. In our case, this group includes cosmos, baby’s breath (gypsophila elegans), some hearty geranium, artemesia, and, of course, the lamb’s ears (stachys byzantina). Think of all this as a form of housekeeping: like cleaning up after an overly (or perhaps just sufficiently) festive party. Once you’ve shoveled through the detris, tossed out the garbage, put the plates and glasses away, and straightened up the sofa cushions, you find your living space has been miraculously restored to you, even if, in truth, the whole room could do with a fresh paint job.

So it goes with the September garden. In then end, just try to concentrate on what’s looking lush and lovely despite the heat and the drought, like our hydrangeas for instance. Or the big, sunshiny stands of heliopsis and helianthus at the top of the summer borders. Or the fall-blooming, sweet clematis paniculata montana that’s showcasing it’s frilly snowflakes on the vegetable garden arbor. And keep in mind that there’s still plenty more enjoyment to be gotten from your gardens straight through till frost.