A very hot spell in early summer brought on a lot of the heat loving plants such as this Sago Palm (Cycas revoluta) which is throwing up a lot of new growth. Normally this produces only a very small number of new leaves in a flush once a year – some years no new growth is seen at all.

The warm start to summer meant the early tomatoes got off to a good start and are now ripening fast. This may not seem surprising but they were actually cropping in July outdoors in Scotland, where generally tomatoes are considered a greenhouse crop. It helps to select a cold-tolerant early variety and the best has proved to be Glacier, here scrambling up the handrail of some south-facing stone steps.

Hart’s-tongue fern (Asplenium) seems to like my garden appearing in cracks in concrete and neglected shady wild corners. Perhaps the mother plant is this one growing in an Air-Pot container. This fern can grow on rocky slopes, walls and even tree branches but it seems to appreciate an Air-Pot container where it produces large fronds thick with the fuzzy chocolate coloured spores, more like Moose’s tongues than Hart’s-tongues.