Monday, August 10th, 2026
Well, that’s an implausible claim if ever there was one. Yet this morning, as my guests came in to breakfast, I asked them if they had enjoyed their visit to Sissinghurst yesterday. “Dry as a bone,” they said. “There was nothing to see. There are more flowers here than at Sissinghurst.” We were astonished. But apparently, the National Trust has adopted a no-watering policy as a climate adaptation strategy, although surely Sissinghurst would be exempt from our current hosepipe ban. Incidentally, ours was the first water authority in the country to impose such a ban this summer, in what feels like a very long time ago. Apart from two minutes of rain last week, we have had not a drop since maybe the beginning of June — it was so long ago that I’ve forgotten when. I’m a life member of the Trust, but I’d be rather upset if I paid good money to visit the gardens only to find a lot of brown, dried up organic matter.
Ever since the hosepipe ban was enforced, we have been watering our front borders with watering cans. There is a lot of ground to cover, especially as the nearest taps are not all that close by. It is exhausting work that must be done at least once a day. But we weren’t going to let a hundred pounds’ worth of plants bought in the spring just shrivel up and die. We found a dead tawny owl and green woodpecker in our pond, which now has only about one inch of water in it. The poor birds got trapped in there and couldn’t fly out. We have now put out spare cat litter trays filled with water to act as drinking troughs and bird baths for the desperately thirsty creatures out there.