Three weeks into the traditional season of ‘winter’, there was still no sign of it. The warm winds from the Azores helped sustain the last of the red admiral butterflies bobbing about the borders and onto the still-flowering heads of gold and purple cosmos. All summer, these stalwarts of the cottage-garden style had refused to oblige. But, rather than hack down their stubborn closed cups, as most tidy gardeners would, I left them to their devices. Like Bob Flowerdew’s, my garden is an ongoing experiment – and the experiment yielded results. The cosmos were saving their glory for a final flourish at the tail end of one of the most extended summers on record. This has also been a mast year for trees – a natural phenomenon, where certain species produce an unusually large crop of fruits, nuts or seeds. Typically, the following year will offer a very low yield...
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