So much of the life of any garden depends on what happens in the sky above it and spring is when it matters most. The manner in which the atmosphere pivots from winter to summer is relatively consistent year by year, at least in our little corner of the northern hemisphere. 

When it comes to weather, our islands are best thought of as what they are: an archipelago lying off the north-westerly tip of Europe. Accordingly, we need warm air from the south and the cooperation of the jet stream to have a decent summer. 

If you look at historic weather data, January and February are actually very similar. While we can see the the sun scramble ever higher into the sky in February, we only start to see the effect on the ground in March, when there is an ever-increasing chance of warm air being sucked up to our northern latitudes.

The pivot from winter to summer continues into April. Country people know April for its showers. April showers are very clever because they give plants the water they need to make the most of the warmth that is coming. From a plant’s perspective, real warmth may only mean a consistent daytime temperature of above eight degrees. This, for example, is when grass will start to get growing again. So April’s showers combine with her increasing windows of warmth to create a little sappy growth – a process that culminates in May.  

Beyond sunlight, plants need two things to grow: water and warmth. In the summer, I try to water in advance of hot spells rather than just during them. Watering plants should not be about saving them from wilting, but rather about giving them exactly what they need to make the most of the heat and light when it comes. 

There are exceptions. If it gets too hot you might as well give up on lettuce and grow something else, but the logic of preparing crops for clement weather rather than just rescuing them from drought holds. If I was gardening in the tropics I might have to think about it all differently, but here in our little archipelago we have to anticipate heat and light and work with what we get. 

The whole pivot to summer, which in a sense starts the day after the shortest day in December, somehow lands in May. In a curious sense, May is the first settled month since December, with all the other months sandwiched between representing periods of some degree of atmospheric flux. Of course you can have odd weather in May, or in January for that matter, but there is a logic to all this and it is highly pertinent to those of us who try to garden or farm.

People often forget that farming is essentially no more than converting grass into food: spring lambs need grass to eat; cows need grass if they are to produce good milk; wheat, oats and barley are all types of grass. In the hungry gap, when grass doesn’t grow, you feed livestock silage; that is to say, last year’s grass. Farming really is all about grass.

May is the most pleasing month of the year and not just because the grass is rich. The countryside is born anew. All the verges that crisscross the ancient lanes surrounding our old farmhouse burst with cow parsley. The fresh new growth of the grass and the unfurling leaves all have the most brilliant colour. These fresh zesty greens are unsullied by the bleaching of summer sun and unbattered by wind or rain. There are depths of green in May that have no parallel through the rest of the year. May green is the colour of the English countryside.

The real joy of my garden in May comes from a rather unexpected direction: the hundreds of metres of hawthorn I have planted. Hawthorn is, or was, known as “May” to country folk for the fact that May (increasingly, the end of April) is when it blossoms. The expression “don’t cast your clout till May is out” is a reference to hawthorn blossom, not the month. Those who reject it for being “too agricultural” are missing out. 

Hawthorn blossom is my absolute favourite. Its sweet, salty scent carries the promise of the summer to come and it spangles in the purest white all the way down our avenue and along our garden hedges. I try not to cut our hawthorn after June to preserve the blossoms for the following May. Most of my hedges are left for several years between cuts, not just to favour animals and insects, but to ensure great wands of hawthorn blossom in May. 

When you see the glistening crystal white of hawthorn blossom, why not say a Hail Mary? It would be a fitting devotion given that the very best month belongs to the very best mother.

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