Published: 23 June 2026 - Watch on YouTube
Hello and welcome back to my windy garden. It has been a hectic few days here in West Sussex, with a storm the forecasters could not even be bothered to name blowing nonstop, day and night. We are heading off on holiday for two weeks this Sunday, so this was all about getting the garden ready before we go, and it turned out to be very much a dahlia day.
Yesterday turned into a proper rescue mission. The little mobile greenhouse that lives outside by the white garage door was a genuine flight risk in that wind, so I moved all the remaining seedlings off it and into the greenhouse, where I am hoping nothing decides to take off.
There is still plenty crammed into the shed and greenhouse right now: brassicas, beetroots, leeks, parsnips, salads, sunflowers, some phlox and cosmos, a few bulbs, and a tray of verbena seedlings. Those verbena are self seeders from the plant growing in the border and from seed I collected last year, and there are still a good few survivors coming up between the floor panels. I may prick some out into little pots and take them to the allotment, which ticks off the job of having verbena down there too.
Before anything snapped, I had to get the string out and tie things up. There really is a good reason this channel is called My Windy Garden. It was a no brainer when I was choosing a name, I did not have to think about it for long at all.
The roses need tying in too, including one that should be climbing up the trellis, and the huge thorns on the main stem caught me out more than once. There is a lot of dead heading waiting for me as well, not just on this rose but everywhere, because all that wind has knocked the petals off so many of them. I always leave the strings a little longer than needed, they always come in handy later when something else needs securing.
Today is Thursday and we leave on Sunday for two weeks, so I wanted to go with a clean conscience that I have not neglected the plants. There are still things to be planted out at the allotment, and by the time you see this there should already be a video about that.
The weather has been rain since Sunday, more or less nonstop, with just short breaks here and there to nip out and get little jobs done. The forecast for while we are away is more of the same: rain, wind, and not very warm. Proper English summer reality. So I am not going to miss a great deal, and at least it means the plants should get watered by the rain while we are gone.
The big job was the dahlias. On the top shelf I have tubers from my older plants that divided themselves when I lifted them at the end of last season, and down below I have all my new ones. The plan was to squeeze a few into the flower border with the roses where there is a bit of space, and pot the rest up into bigger plastic pots so they have room and compost to develop their roots.
Those potted ones will sit outside next to my tomatoes, in the space between the borders. I had hoped to take some to the allotment, but there is just not enough time before we go. Before I could plant anything I had to remind myself of the colours, so it was a quick Google and digging out the email from when I bought the tubers to check each variety.
When I lifted a few pots I found the reason a couple of things had vanished. Where a shoot had come up weeks ago and then disappeared, the ground was full of rolly pollies and the tuber underneath was completely rotten. Lovely Ally from A Rusty Garden, who is well worth a watch, pointed out in a comment that woodlice tend to gather where something has died, because they feed on the dead plant material. So out came the rotten tubers, which freed up a spot.
My rudbeckia in the same border never came up this season either. I pulled out the stem and it was completely dry and dead, with no obvious sign of disease. I hope the soil there has not got some sort of problem, but everything else in that bed is fine, so I am choosing to believe it was just one of those things. There was the usual running commentary of spiders and a very rude slug living in the bottom of a pot, leaving mucus everywhere.
I gave them all a feed of fish, blood and bone and a sprinkle of general slow release fertiliser for flowers. Four dahlias went into the flower border. Totally Tangerine, an open petalled variety in a darker pink going to a rusty middle, went into the hole where the rudbeckia used to be, and I reused the support that had held the rudbeckia. Dark Spirit, a very dark burgundy pom pom, took the spot where Brown Sugar was last year. All the borders were mulched with well rotted horse manure in spring and topped with wood chip.
Between rain showers I dashed out to add Rhubarb and Custard, and tucked a taller Sarah Raven pompom behind the Queen of Sweden rose. The rest, including Sylvia, Cafe au Lait, Sweet Natalie, a white one and Golden Scepter, got potted up into big plastic pots, some of them the ones our trees were delivered in. By the end every single dahlia was either in the ground or in a pot.
Back and forth to the shed as the rain came and went, but I got there in the end. Today really was the dahlia day, and I am so pleased they are all sorted before we head off. The verbena has come out beautifully too, and I did not expect that purple against the red trellis to look so lovely. A completely unintentional combination that just worked. If you are lifting or planting dahlias at the moment, I would love to hear which varieties you are growing this year. Thank you for pottering along with me, and I will see you in the next one.
Tags: #DahliaSeason #WindyGarden #WestSussexGarden #HolidayPrep #CottageBorder #MyWindyGarden