Gardening and recent UK winters.

Garden design and recent UK winters.

Anybody who has a garden, or designs them or builds them has struggled with the weather conditions for a solid 7 months and counting. It’s like a battlefield! One minute we are mopping up the wounded, next mourning the losses and now rushing to the aid of the (yet again) stricken with hosepipes and buckets. Here in the UK and many other parts of the world these have been tough months and now in the East of England we are dreading the hosepipe bans that will really signal big trouble.


We were all taken by surprise in the UK in late November by what I call the IAO – Instant Arctic Onslaught. From a usual autumnal progression we went to frozen ground and deep snow, biting north easterly winds and scary temperatures breaking records seemingly every day. As garden designers and landscape gardeners we were caught in the middle of a large construction project and could not get onto site to work for week after week. Our industry peers in the nursery trade had the final weeks of their season dramatically pruned off and even builders working on exterior projects were affected. The amazingly dry UK summer of 2011 now presents us with another challenge.

During the winter a kind of depression was hard to avoid – we continually asked ourselves ‘are we heading for another ice age – or is this just a blip’. The consequences of several months business inertia combined with the uncertainty for future seasons were pretty hard to deal with and stay positive. There were all sorts of philosophical stances I and fellow tradesmen took – ‘yeah we’ve had it easy for 10 or 15 years’, ‘nobody can tell what is going to happen – so we might as well carry on and just re plant’, or ‘things move in cycles and now I’m going to plant alpines and conifers’ or worst of all ‘Ive had enough of this I’m giving up gardening and taking up golf’!

For those of us in the business of designing and building gardens (like me) surely we have to try and find a way of understanding what is going on with the planets weather systems? I can’t accept that there is no way to tell what the next few years will bring – I have to explore the different exponents and their theories of what is to come – or else perhaps golf is the better option! Personally speaking I’m not tied to the stereotypical ‘exotic gardening’ style – where one tries to grow tender stuff and evoke a Malaysian paradise. Don’t get me wrong ....I do love the tropical feel and have frequently indulged in its abundance and exuberance – but I can see the same level of exoticism in a stone and raked gravel Zen garden, an alpine nook or Himalayan glade. For me the main consequence of the seemingly impending series of arctic winters to come is one of business logistics: will I be forced to practically shut down for 3 or 4 months? Will I stop designing with a large chunk of the plant palette that I have used for the last 10 years etc.?


For much of 2010 I subscribed to a weather forecasting service which purported to have an 80% accuracy of prediction. They were pretty good for the summer but failed to predict the early blast of winter in November, then they forecast an apocalyptic January and February ‘the worst for a hundred years’ which also failed to materialise. They also predicted some rain early this spring.....needless to say I have not renewed my subscription. One of the most interesting things I have heard about the recent winters in the UK – from a nursery owner I was chatting to, is that the American meteorological service predicted the early winter blast in November long before it happened. They knew about it because of El Nino and La Nina cycles which they monitor closely, and that UK forecasters pay less attention to because they do not happen in our back yard. However sea temperatures do affect the position of the Jet stream, which is most definitely ‘in our back yard’. If our early and severe winter, and the 2 before it were linked to La Nina/El Nino cycle and their influence on the jet stream is it possible that the extreme conditions may have been a passing phenomenon? Or are we on a gradual slide into another ice age? Perhaps now we will return to our mild winters?...please?...