This week’s reflections from the gardens at Ford Park, Ulverston

FOR some, the garden in August is an explosion of hot, some say tropical, some say psychedelic, colour. Here at Ford Park, the three banana trees forming a quirky "trinity" adjacent to our Victorian tool store wedding venue, together with the riot of dahlias, are certainly doing their thing.

In some people’s gardens, August sees a rise towards the peak performance of the slightly more subtle but no less breath-taking contemporary perennials planted in swathes. It is to these forwarding-thinking sustainable gardeners we hope to appeal with the plant choices we are making with the development of our gorgeous, well designed little nursery here at Ford Park.

The nursery design and construction is a demonstration of the unique composition of the team that is Ford Park Community Group. As most people know, the group consists largely of volunteers. Our nursery building project brought forward people setting up new businesses in the fields of construction and landscaping as well as art, volunteering their time. We also had professionals from established local firms sparing many hours and much expertise working alongside committed regular volunteers who have skills and backgrounds in education, horticulture and art to name but some of the areas from which our team is drawn.

Encircling the nursery are our espalier trained apples, which continue to draw much attention. The harvest of the Keswick Codlins has begun as have our preparations for Apple Day. If you do plan to come we are including this year composting instruction, provided by our newly qualified master composter Steve Povey.

This weekend, even if you don’t have the "heat" of cannas and dahlias, or are yet to develop naturalistic perennial swathes, there will still be much to enjoy in your garden. Productive gardens will be at their peak of course but, if you feel that in your flower garden there is a sense of an ending, it is a good time to study leaf form and colour and even stem colour of your plants. Many plant enthusiasts complain that because they love to buy so many different plants, the garden itself can have a chaotic or "busy" appearance and lack a relaxing sense of flow or rhythm to which they aspire. This observation of plant form and colour can be a way of working on this sense of unity in a garden. The eye will be drawn to the similarities among the plants, even where there is difference. Next year you may achieve a connection between neighbouring plants. Study them now and plan some moves that you can carry out in the autumn, when growth has slowed right down but the soil is still warm.

If you are quietly studying the garden this weekend, you will notice the wildlife there. If, like us, you are letting your plants seed, you will have goldfinches visiting, they love our teasels. Working on the lime trees on our drive this week (repairing some damage) we came across a beautiful caterpillar - possibly one which will become a grey dagger moth.

Other visitors - of the human variety - have also been numerous this week. It is lovely to hear the positive remarks about the garden and the endorsement of the environmental values we hold. A visitor encourages the gardener to see their garden as a whole as we lift our heads up from the particular job in hand. Keep coming - tell us what you think! You may find coming out of the kitchen this week some of our exceptional lettuces, more figs and a gorgeous cake made from one of our many blackberry harvests.