I see my garden as a barometer of climate change | Catriona Sandilands

I worry about my beautiful, compromised plants, exposed to unseasonable ice storms and heatwaves The clematis is in full bloom right now: a riot of purple flowers up the side of the deck, aiming for the wall.Being a vine, a clematis will twine around anything that crosses its path, including itself, at all available opportunities. The result is often, even with a short period of gardener inattention, a snarly mess; the leafstalks curl, and curl, in on themselves in order to find some - any - purchase. In this situation, if you want to coax the vine outward, you have to unwind the intricate tendrils very gently and place them against better climbing scaffolds: a thin stick, a wire. One long spring afternoon in May, that is what I did: slowly and carefully took apart the knots, suggesting to each shoot a less tangled path up a new, metal trellis. Continue reading...