Mark Dwelly, Head Gardener at Audley Stanbridge Earls, comments:
“After back-to-back heatwaves, scorched lawns, and weeks under hosepipe bans, seeing rain on the UK forecast feels like a massive relief. But relying on a sudden downpour to fix a heat-shocked garden is a trap."
“When soil bakes through repeated hot spells, it forms a hard, crusty layer that becomes hydrophobic. It repels water like concrete. When a heavy storm hits that baked surface, the water simply can't penetrate. It bounces straight off, strips away topsoil, floods patios, and runs down the drains, leaving your plants just as thirsty underneath. If we want our gardens to actually recover from a summer of extreme heat, we need to do a bit of prep before the rain arrives.”
