A Walk to the Seaside: Part II – Summer

In March I posted “A Last Winter Walk to the Seaside” inspired by A Tidewater Gardener.   We are officially in Summer, heralded in by the Summer Solstice on 21 June, so it is now time for my first ‘Summer walk’ down the sea to capture the changes in 3 months.

For a few days now the weatherman has been forecasting a heat wave today, Sunday 26 June, with temperatures up to 30°C.   I was a little dubious to begin with when opening the curtains because it looked grey and drizzling outside, however, within a couple of hours the sun came out and it was certainly quite warm by 11:30 am.  Just right for a walk to the beach.

My first stop was Grand Avenue, which certainly lives up to its name.  It is a wide, tree-lined road which goes straight down to the seafront.  In the 19th Century, it was known as “Ladies Mile” and apparently Victorian ladies used to race with pony and traps down this road.

Living by the sea for so long, you get wise to the fact you can never guarantee that the weather inland is what you get by the sea.  As I reached the end of the road, the sun had gone, and there was a sea fret.  I love that word…”fret”.  I heard it several years ago and it is a wet mist that rolls inland from the sea.  It often hangs around all day, and I feel sorry for those who have packed up their picnics and deck chairs to drive to the beach for the day, only to discover the blue sky has gone and you can’t see the sea.  It doesn’t stop people though, what a resilient lot we are.

The sky was interesting with the fret/mist blending into the beautiful blue sky.  I tried to capture it in my camera but not to sure if you can see it properly.  What you can see in the photo below is, what I think, a lovely Thirties style house which has recently been renovated.  I can imagine sitting with a gin and tonic on the roof terrace taking in the wonderful seaviews.

We are now in Marine Gardens, with a pitch and putt at the front of the gardens and a bowling green at the back.

Note to self:  I love Penstemons, why do I never grow them in my garden?  I must get some.

As I walked through the gardens, I saw a magnificent Hydrangea with flowers as large as your head.  It looked as though it couldn’t make up its mind whether to be blue or pink and in doing so, ended up a very delicate shade of white.

I said in my Winter Walk post that I like this park because some thought has been given to the planting, it is not full of what I call Council issue flowers.  They have surprised me though because in one section of the garden, which has a water feature, they have planted a complete bed of Cordyline and nothing else.  I have to be honest and say I don’t like it.

As I left Marine Gardens, I took a look at the Olive trees and noticed little shoots coming out of the trunks.  Someone had commented on the earlier post how badly coppiced the trees were. They seem to have filled out well, and the gnarled trunks are great.  I will be interested to see what they do with the shoots – remove them I suspect.

My last port of call was the Southern Water Drought Garden.   It was full of drought resistance plants and flowers.  If you click on the link there is a very informative website which gives lots of information of different types of plants for drought conditions.

Again, I have been unable to present you with lovely photographs of blue sea.  We do have sunny seaside days in Worthing, it is just unfortunate that on my walk in March we had a fog and a fret in June.

Thank you for joining me in my Summer walk to the seafront, and I will give you sunny blue seaside photos shortly, promise.