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Every time I wander around the garden, I am repeatedly reminded that we only have now until the end of July to sow biennials.

This is because I have blocks of Sweet William ‘Nigracans’ and ‘Aricula Eyed’ that have been hanging around for the last six weeks, making everything smell of Summer and adding some 1950’s style glamour to proceedings.

As the title suggests, biennials come round every two years, which, although it seems a faff, can be easily circumvented by planting them every year, so, after two years, they effectively become perennials for the duration of their life cycle.

I first found this out years ago after buying some expensive Sea Holly and thinking it had died, only for it to re-emerge two years later, stronger and bluer than ever. Imagine being the butt of a joke from a flower!

After I’d discovered this, and feeling more than a little stupid, it was one of those ‘mistakes as learning opportunities’ the garden throws up all too often in my case.

The advantage of this lesson was that understanding how they worked opened up a whole range of flowers that could fill any patch on their own. It’s well worth having a designated bed of biennials, just because it’s easier to keep track if they are all in one place.

The problem can be that some of them are notorious for self-seeding and these include foxgloves, poppies and wallflowers. In fact, poppies can still germinate after over 10 years in the soil. I’m always amazed how scientists worked out what it was like on Dartmoor in the Iron Age by finding active tree pollen in the soil.

If you haven’t got into biennials yet, then you’re in for a treat as long as you can wait. If you don’t want to, there are always adult plants you can buy and stick them in for a quick fix, but do it two years running!

This dry weather is making it easy to hoe over the weeds but make sure, in your enthusiasm, you don’t take out anything else. I’ve decapitated one or two onions in this way, thinking I’m a precise surgeon impatiently slaloming in between rows of alliums but with a blunt hoe.

Water early or late in the day if you can. You might have to get up an hour early just this week to keep things going. Watering in the sun can be futile and lead to run off and mould forming, so don’t waste your lunchtime doing this.

As a reward for all this work, make sure you pick the odd tomato or carrot for yourself. Start to water tomatoes a little less right now, as this promotes fruit production in the heat. Feeding every two or three days will be sufficient. Don’t put chillies in your trouser pocket when they appear either, as this leads to awkward explanations when the washing machine engineer turns up.

Morello cherries need pruning and training now. Fruit grows on wood a year or more older and slows down after five years, so remove thicker branches over that age. Do this on a dry day and try to get a goblet shape where no branches are crossing and diseased branches removed. Make sure your loppers are sterilised and razor sharp, as you don’t want any canker or other disease that reduces your cherry harvest.

You’ll still be able to sit under it with a drink this way and pick the cherries off next May before stuffing them into a baguette with goat’s cheese. This, for me, is the essence of Summer and even better if they’re straight from the tree. Just garden at your own pace this week, try to specialise in organised loafing and making relaxation the art that it is.

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Build Torbay, in partnership with Torquay Girls’ Grammar School, invites Torbay students to an inspirational careers event this autumn to showcase the rewarding career opportunities in the built environment sector. Headline speaker is Ailie MacAdam, Bechtel senior vice president and president of their mining and metals global business unit – who

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