This is my 200th post, I wish it were a more positive one – but it is giving you a true vision of how the heat is effecting My Hesperides Garden.
A week ago rain was forecast and I was just a little hopeful that the temperatures would begin to fall. Mid-August is when often the weather breaks; but not this year! This last week has been hotter than ever with news broadcasts recommending that the elderly stay indoors or visit air-conditioned shopping centres to keep cool! More elderly people die in Italy during hot summers than in winter. By eight in the morning it is almost too hot to stay in the garden and in the afternoon it is still really too hot to work even at six pm. The plus side to this is obviously that we can have dinner outside and watching the sun going down and begin to breathe again. This is an exceptionally hot year; records are being broken but I sincerely hope that the furnace that is August this year won’t be repeated for some years to come.
In the parts of the garden planted with drought tolerant plants I have been shocked to see plants suffering and possibly dying! Just how many plants I’ll lose is difficult to tell just yet; maybe I won’t know until next spring the exact number of plants that have succumbed to the record temperatures and the lack of any real precipitation for many months.
I admit to being deceived earlier in the year April and May were not as hot as some other years although there was little rain. I resolved not to begin irrigating until it was really necessary – MISTAKE! Early June was also not excessively hot but the 15th June the temperatures suddenly rose and with the heat also came strong desiccating winds – worst scenario for a garden and worse still I was away in Prague that weekend. When I returned and saw the garden on Tuesday morning I realised that the ground was already dried out and that many plants were struggling, the struggling has continued to now.
What plants have thrived in this heat and parched summer? Not many have thrived! Euphorbia myrsinites doesn’t mind how dry or hot it is, and most of my other Euphorbias are doing well too, especially E. rigida.
I had imagined that all silver leaved plants would at least tolerate the heat but some look pretty sad. Senecio maritima and S. cineraria aren’t dying but their foliage is curled to protect them even more from the sun’s rays, this is also true of Artemisia varieties.

Foliage of Solanum jasminoides also shows how leaves curl to protect itself from too much sun. It isn’t wasting energy by flowering either
Ceanothus repans certainly copes in these conditions and gives a lovely dark green mound at the corner of the drive.
Festuca glauca was another plant that I thought I wouldn’t have to worry about (it is a signature plant in my garden), but the larger plants are looking very untidy and with more dead thatch than I’ve ever seen in previous years. I am hoping that if I lift and divide them the new plants will establish for next summer, I also have some small plants that were self-seedlings that can be planted as replacements for any that are truly dead.
Surprisingly Lonicera fragrantissima hasn’t lost any of its leaves, I have given it some water during the summer but only when a nearby crab apple is stressed and I water that.
Viburnum tinus is usually considered a tough plant for almost any conditions; it is the wind that has caused most damage to this shrub, the side that receives the afternoon wind from the west is completely scorched, and I doubt that the branches on this side will recover.
Even the lavender hedge around the formal beds has patches that I’m hoping aren’t dead. It has been pruned so that light and air can reach into the bushes; again this will be a wait and see scenario; it will be a huge problem if some plants have died completely leaving ugly gaps.
To finish a few other images (good and bad) of My Hesperides Garden today.

Wisteria on the pillars is lush and full of flower, but it gets some irrigation as the roses planted close to them receive water, which even reaches the lavender hedge close to the terrace
All the images were taken at around 8.30 in the morning, you can see how strong the glare of the sun is, even at that time.
I hope you will want to share some of your foliage on this Garden Bloggers Foliage day, just leave a comment with the link, thank you. I’m looking forward to some lush foliage from the UK and spring offerings from the southern hemisphere.
Your photos really tell the story of the heat you’ve been experiencing. I’m sure some of the plants will be fine come next spring but I can see why you are worried that many may not. Oh those box balls. I don’t no what to say really other than I feel your pain. It is awful when you’ve nurtured plants for them to succumb to the weather, pests or disease. It seems to be the whole of the Med that is having such conditions. Here in the UK, orchard owners in Herefordshire have been saying that ordinarily you wouldn’t be able to see the trees for apples, at this time of year but this year there are barely any fruit at all and potatoes have rotted in the fields. It looks like too much rain in the UK and drought in Europe will combine for some expensive food prices this autumn and winter. I guess we can only hope this is a blip and won’t be repeated but I fear it is climate change taking effect.
I think a lot of people misunderstand climate change and believe that things will just get warmer (in a quite pleasant way), whereas I’m sure it is a matter of extremes of weather; England’s wet summer, our hot dry one, hurricanes in the US, heavy snow where it hasn’t snowed for years – all this and more is what we can expect. Gardening will certainly become more difficult. If we have colder winters (as last winter) and hotter, drier summers the number of plants we can grow successfully will become more limited. Christina
Christina, what is the weater doing with us and plants? We here actually had not summer, only one week was hot (+24-28C) and you and your garden suffer so much!
The weather this year seems to have been extreme everywhere. Christina
Christina your pictures say it all. You and your garden have suffered more than any I have seen. I agree people do misunderstand climate change. The extremes that are happening in places where they don’t usually and that are magnified to such a high degree where they might occasionally. I can only imagine what the next seasons will hold for all of us. This change has been coming with violent storms in the US for a few years now and large scale droughts that are affecting farmers more than anyone in so many places.
Forgot to share my link-
http://gardenseyeview.com/2012/08/13/bloom-day-a-bust-almost/
Yes, it is the farmers and us gardeners that are the barometer for what’s happening. Christina
Christina, you are very brave showing the devastation in your garden – mine is pretty much the same and I dare not photogragh it … perhaps I should for reference later in the year when (if?) we finally get some rain. I think the lack of rain during spring has indeed had a lot to do with the way plants have been struggling since early in the summer, as well as the horrible winds. Here I have some areas of ground that are pure clay and when this dries out and cracks open up the roots of plants get suddenly exposed and they die almost immediately. I am making lists of plants to order from Filippi et al but hardly know where to start.
In bocca al lupo,
Yvonne
I was thinking of Filippi too. You visited his nursery didn’t you? Was it worth the trip? Christina
Yes, once in late June and once in October. I thought it was well worth the trip but of course easier to justify if you are driving to/from UK or have other things you want to do in the area.
maybe I’ll go
oh Christina I feel for you, it reminds me of those 2 summers in the 70s when so much dried up in the south east UK, I agree with your reply to WW too many people think GW will mean nice warm weather, not so! I heard a programme a year or so ago where they explained how some parts of the world would get much wetter and others drier and then this year when the professor explained how the melting of the northern ice cap was causing all the strong cold north winds we experienced up here,
I hope you mean it when you say you want to see lush foliage from the UK as I saved my last Beth Chatto post on foliage for your meme, I’ll post it now and come back with the link, Frances
Of course I meant it; and a Beth Chatto post will be a wonderful treat. Christina
You’ve been hit so hard this year, it must be pretty distressing. Fingers crossed the weather breaks for you soon.
well as I said it may give me some planting opportunities, but with some very serious thouth about what I plant. Christina
Congratulations on your 200th blog entry! You have certainly had fiercely difficult conditions for gardening this year. While drought has been the norm in my area for the last few summers, rains returned here at the end of this summer and greened up the garden. It is something I cannot count on next year though.
Here is a link to my GBFD post: http://pbmgarden.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/garden-bloggers-foliage-day-august-2012/
Thanks for hosting GBFD.
pbm
Thanks for joining in again this month with a great post. All your foliage looks beautiful, Christina
as you saw Christina my Beth Chatto foliage post is up here is a link
http://islandthreads.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/beth-chatto-garden-3-the-foliage/
I’m glad you enjoyed it and happy 200th blog post, Frances
Thanks for joining in this month, Frances and with a real gem! Christina
how sad your garden looks… it has been hard on the humans and animals too. Those hot afternoon winds make it impossible to go out and the terrace is scorching till after sundown.
Its very hard on me; I hate the hea, at least I can be in the garden in the evening, a terrace with the heat of the building bouncing off is worse. Christina
My heart goes out to you, that looks alarming. Especially if you are losing plants that you regard as drought tolerant. Have to move to plan B. I wonder what the landscape, the wild plants and the farmland look like?
The farmland is watered heavily. The area does have underground water and irrigation ditches. They grow maize one of the thirstiest crops there could be. I dispair sometimes. The sheep, the major animal farmed in the area are moved continuously from field to field, I think they are eating the few weeds that are still growing because the grass is definately not growing. Christina
http://elephantseyegarden.blogspot.com/2012/08/wildflower-wednesday-about-blog-photos.html
Sending you some leafy green memories of winter.
Our wheat farmers depend on the rain, but all the vineyards are irrigated. (Farmers closer to the sea are getting salt sea water contamination in their aquifers. Another alarming thing is that abusing groundwater reserves, becomes yet more rise in sea level.)
It is sad to see one of my favorite gardens in the world suffering so! I hope the terrible heat will soon break for you. August here has been unusually wet and cooler than usual; I am so grateful, for every year I dread August. It is often our hottest and driest month, when the heat persists even through the night.
P.S. Congratulations on 200 posts!
It is not being able to sleep well because of the heat that is the worst thing about this time of year. Christina
What can I say Christina, such devastation after all your hard work. Hopefully a good cut back and rain in September might save most of your plants.But your box balls…..I know how long they take to grow to a decent size, they would be so expensive to replace like for like. Goodness knows what is happening with our weather, everyone seems to be having extremes of something this year,
The link to my post is http://www.leadupthegardenpath.com
Thanks for joining in again this month Pauline. I know that you are right, many plants will recover as soon as the autumn rains arrive. I also know that I could have saved some plants by irrigating more but it is my decision how much water I use or fell it is correct to use. Chrisitna
Goodness Christina, your poor garden is really suffering. It must be hard to remain philosophical in the face of so much damage. Those poor box balls! I can only hope that you are pleasantly surprised when you see how much has, in fact, survived.
A lot will recover, I know but having come through a very cold 2 weeks in February (minus 8* – 10° C) without any losses, it is hard to see things suffering now. Christina
P.S. I’d completely forgotten it was GBFD, so here is my (belated) post: http://plantaliscious.janetbruten.co.uk/2012/08/gbfd-august-2012/
Hi Janet, thank you so much for joining in this month, I’m about to pop over to your site to read your post. It should be the 22nd so you’re not late! Christina
Hi Christina, Congratulations on your 200th post. Our summer has been hot and dry as well. I have lost several shrubs and have been keeping the perennials going with water from the hose. Finally, it has started to get cooler here and we have had some days of rain. I hope that you get a break soon too.
Thank you, I wouldn’t have imagined when I started that I’d reach 200, here’s to the next 200! Christina
Christina, I am often known to complain of our cool Summers, it does have an advantage though,plants more often than not remain healthy and never burn out. It is strange so many people from around the world say how very hot the Summer has been, yet in Scotland’s east coast we have had the coldest and wettest Summer in decades. I hope most of your plants do survive.
Climate change is about extremes, it is a mistake to think that it is about nice warm weather everywhere. Coldest, hottest, windiest, the most snow, hurricanes etc. etc. We have only just begun to see the effects. Christina
Sorry about the missing rain..
I am so sorry that you are experiencing this terrible heat. I hope that your plants prove resilient and come back when it rains. That has often been the case in my garden but mine is not terribly sunny.
I’m sure many plants are just hibernating, I won’t remove anything until I’m sure they’re dead. Christina
That decision is already being made for me – badgers have broken in and are digging up whole plants. Carnage.
Poor you! That’s dreadful; we had a family of badgers who were using the garden as a run last year, but they didn’t dig anything up! There are a lot of Istriche (porcupines) this year, they haven’t come into the garden so far, but I know they do huge amounts of damage. Christina