I have high hopes for the English September. It cannot be as washed-up as this English August. It is a month which becomes increasingly beautiful as gardens prepare for their second run. They prepare best if they are cut back intelligently and deadheaded. I will be deadheading thoughtfully over this long weekend, always learning more from the way plants respond to careful use of the clippers.

Deadheading has had some notable tributes. It is the subject of one of the best of those fine gardening articles by Vita Sackville-West, the presiding spirit of the garden at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent. She evokes her cutting of the dead flowers off her old roses under the light of an emerging moon. Queen Victoria could be still on the throne, she sensed, as the quiet, solitary work seemed not to belong to the bustle of the modern world. The only sounds were the last of the evening birdsong while the moon, “our pale satellite”, threw its flattering light and shadow on the garden’s outline. She felt at one with the job, as we still do, and also felt that the roses were pleased by what she was doing to them.