It’s been a few weeks and the persistent rain has quietened down to the occasional shower but it still isn’t really that warm. If it was mid-May then it would be great, but we’re a little past that now.

We had our annual Plant Sale for the local gardening club towards the start of the month and that went well. It was a little quiet and as expected, there were fewer plants all-round since the season has been so poor, but we did well for the challenge.

We also had our first public NGS Open Day of 2024 the week after, where we opened with another local garden, who were encouraged to join the NGS scheme after visiting us last year! It was probably the sum of local and online advertising, the NGS coverage at Chelsea, combined opening, no pre-booking arrangements, word-of-mouth and a whole heap of other things that led to us welcoming almost 150 visitors to the garden that afternoon.

It was thrilling to have such an overwhelming response as – for context – this is at least double our busiest and on average, triple the usual numbers that we had to NGS Open Days last year. I had made 8 large cakes on a bumper baking day, expecting to have a fair amount left over to test freezing them, but they all went, gone, down to the very last slice. Unfortunately I did have to disappoint a few people who were looking forward to the teas, but at least it was later in the afternoon, when things were coming to a close.

We’ve never had so many people on the patio and milling about the garden, there was a real “buzz”. I was anchored to my phone app and the credit card machine, watching the cake slices disappear one by one (occasionally in fours) and trying to keep people entertained as they waited patiently for the kettles to boil. I wish I was able to take some photos, but never got chance.

Luckily the NGS volunteers for the afternoon had helped on our Open Days last year and so were experienced, but even they were rushed off their feet serving cake and making the hot drinks, collecting the empties to wash up to be reused for people still in the queue.

As usual, the verbal and written comments were all lovely and split between the garden and the cake. The only critical person seemed to be me. I noted the patio pots still only had seedlings plants, the annuals are only just now getting going, ready to flower in a few weeks. There were gaps in the borders (with seedlings growing for those), there was no sign of the dahlias and some of the border edging and weeding wasn’t complete, admittedly this was under dense shrubbery and ferns, so wasn’t really visible unless you knew what to look for.

Our next NGS Open Day is alongside our partner garden again this weekend and I’m very relieved that it is their turn to make, host and serve the teas. We’ll just have a bit of seating on the patio for those wanting a sit from the short walk between the two gardens. I’m very much looking forward to the no-baking on the day before and the lack of organising the crockery, tables and just everything that goes along with making and serving food. I can focus on the people and the garden, though I’ll still be tied to my phone with the app that drives the card machine.

The garden has had a little sunshine and it has brought more flowers out and the borders are looking fuller. The soaked, bedraggled look of the garden in May has given way to a drier, more sun-tanned, healthy glow and hopefully that will continue over the summer (that last word in air-quotes). The patio pots – if not yet flowering – aren’t just a collection of tiny seedlings in large containers anymore. It’s also starting to smell divine. The jasmine on the back of the house is starting to flower, as are the Regal Lilies along with honeysuckle in the hedge and the roses covering the arches and the pergola. The mock orange is fully out too – several mature shrubs of them – it should be the most fragrant NGS garden in the county.

While there are garden jobs that need doing, none of them feel terribly urgent, apart from perhaps giving the benches a clean; the birds aren’t house-trained, after all. It’s a stark difference to the panic I was feeling in the run-up to the first NGS, when I was trying to squeeze in a whole winter’s worth of clean-up in a few weeks when the weather finally let up from being so hostile and allowed the garden to dry out, just enough.

So just like the garden, I’ll plan to coast through to the next NGS event in a few days and then – as I’ve not planned anything beyond that – think about how best to spend the rest of the summer months, preferably from a sun lounger.