Miles Collins

Spring is dead, long live the summer…

It’s summer in Europe, Spring was over in the blink of an eye and we are enjoying the best weather of the year so far. The same thing happened last year, April was glorious and everyone got excited declaring England the new St Tropez and it was all thanks to global warning. I too was lulled into a false sense of summer sun, I planted salads, vegetables and herbs earlier than I used to only to watch the horrendous wind and rain in June and July wipe out 80% of my crop.

Many of the herbs I had grown specifically for photographing for a book project in the States were destroyed after weeks of careful nurturing. So today before venturing on to the kitchen garden I decided to make the most of the sunshine with a long morning walk in my favourite woods hoping to see the first signs of new growth and wildlife.

I love this time of year, the woods and surrounding fields are slowly coming out of their deep sleep, the trees, full of birdsong are begining to turn a lush green and butterflies are flitting in and around the hedgerows.

There was an abundance or yellow and white flowering shrubs with colour coordinated butterflies to match. I watched grey squirrels and the ‘mad’ brown hares of March sprinting through the undergrowth and my first sighting of a grass snake for more years than I care to remember.

Inspired by the warm sunshine and the new lease of life in the woods I returned to the garden to sow the first seeds outside of the year. Borage went in first, I shall keep a close check on this one this year, I use it a lot at work but it self seeds at such a rate that not even a kitchen as busy as mine can keep up with the flowers they can produce.

The angelica is doing well although I am mildly concerned about their position. I have since learnt that they attract black and fruit flies, they sit in front of my newly sited apple and plum trees. Now the question is will they attract them away from the fruit trees or draw them towards my prize laxton apples and victorian plums? The stems of the angelica are quite beautiful and the leaves an attractive mass of green…

I’ve set aside an area for wild flowers to attract butterflies and birds, there’s a mixed bag of flowers and herbs; sunflowers, anise hyssop, borage, cornflower, teasel, mustard, buckwheat, flax and canary grass. Besides providing a haven for greenfinches, linnets, hoverflies, butterflies and bees it will give me something to photograph and (hopefully) keep the birds off my vegetables!

I’ve sown a twenty foot row of green fennel, I love this herb and picking the dried flowering heads is one of life’s (well, mine) great pleasures. Freshly dried and crushed fennel pollen is one of the greatest smells and tastes ever-you have got to try it. Garlic chives have been added to my new herb bed which is 20ft x 10ft and should provide a real splash of colour and interest between the sages, thymes, hyssops and burnet.

Last of all was a row of broad beans, sown in pots they are hardy enough to plant out-they laugh in the face of a frost. I love fresh broad beans, especially with fish or lamb and look forward to picking the fresh pods hopefully before the moles or mice get to them!