There’s lots to celebrate this month. On the first I celebrated my twenty eighth anniversary of being here. Both the garden and I have grown up together. Man and boy – but the female equivalent. The builders are cracking on with our new bridge. They are as I type in the process of bricking two semicircular brick arches. It’s fascinating to watch. Starting from the base they are using wooden arches as a guide that also supports the bricks as they build. Once they have finished the arches they will then carefully remove the wooden supports revealing the two new brick archways.
September may be misty and mellow but it is also the month to celebrate bright and brilliant colours. This slipping of the light is a great advantage to the rich colours in our walled garden as the lower slant of the sun burnishes all the reds, purples, coppers and oranges. All of our plants that originate close to the Equator, like sunflowers, dahlias, tithonias and cosmos continue to fill the garden with splashes of bright, strong colour (especially if we can keep up the increasingly demanding job of dead-heading).
The walled garden is still providing many summer crops such as French and runner beans, sweetcorn and courgettes. It is a rich month in every part of the garden, made more precious by the daily awareness that it is all gently fading into autumn.
Once we reach September, our pears are ripening by the hour as the swallows frantically work the sky above the garden, building up their stores for their astonishing journey south. I know that every day is potentially the last for both of them and that sense of harvest and subsequent loss tinges this season with melancholy.
As a rule, the later an apple ripens the longer it will keep. Pick an apple at the moment when it will come away in your hand and it will be both perfectly ready to eat and will store in the best possible condition. But pears must be picked before they are fully ripe and the ripening process is the very thing that limits their storage time. This is why it is almost impossible to buy a ripe pear from anything other than a good greengrocer.
A pear will ripen from the inside and gradually the flesh will soften and be at its juiciest best. This is the moment when it must be eaten. But you have to take the opportunity exactly as it comes because the next stage is rapid disintegration and decomposition and the most perfectly ripe fruit becomes a rotten, squidgy shell in a matter of days – if not hours.
Pears are a luxury – a seasonal treat. Better to eat a few of the real thing every year (that you have nurtured and been acquainted with from blossom to ripening) than a shiny, tasteless affair every day.
Apart from the fruit, pear trees are glorious objects and in full early April blossom makes the best flowering plant on the planet.
The variety we have here at Columbine is ‘Conference’ and is the most reliable of all the pears you can grow.
September may mark the end of summer but I love the slight chill in the air and the way the garden is spilling over with fruit and seeds. If the year is slipping away – at least it is showering us with gifts.
Kate Elliott came to Columbine Hall in 1997 when she was sixteen. She is now head gardener but also helps with managing the property generally and in conducting guided tours.