Charles Darwin scored his problems by walking round a wood and kicking a stone, even as a child.

A one-stone problem was trivial, but if he got up to a ten-stone problem it was a different matter.

I score my summers in a similar way, by the number of summer dresses I wear. So far I’ve scored 20, so I know it’s been a sunny summer. However, parts of the garden are flagging, including heleniums and veronicastrums. Both are North American prairie plants found in dampish meadows and flowering later here than they would at home. Newly-planted climbers, roses and perennials are flagging too and the technique for all these wilting plants is to gently tip two or three buckets of water on their roots. Do not dribble the hose over them: this will not revive anything. As soon as it rains they will perk up. The lawn is browning too. Not an attractive look, but certainly not terminal, and it will recover!

Lots of plants are thriving and these include those from hotter southern-hemisphere locations, used to summer heat. Dahlias, sustained by their tubers, are racing away and those decimated by slugs are recovering all on their own. Shrubby salvias, forms of S. microphylla, S. greggii and their natural hybrid S. x jamensis, are also putting out lots of flower after a cold start. Penstemons are flourishing too and all three will carry on late into October. These are useful plants in any summer, but particularly in hot summers like this one. All dianthus, once established, will also thrive in dry heat and I am loving ‘Purple Jenny’, a clove-scented, long-flowering pink acquired from Allwoods (www.allwoods.net/0208 393 7616). My favourite plant in a dry summer, though, is a shrubby umbellifer called Bupleurum fruticosum. This rounded evergreen, one of the very few shrubby umbellifers, grows by my gate forming a seven-foot roundel with foliage that resembles an olive tree’s. It’s hardy, although sometimes the foliage is nipped back by cold and needs a trim in spring to remove browned tips. By July it has produced hundreds of lime-green umbels, full of tight buttons arranged in neat stars. These are adored by small flies, once they open in August, and when I enter my gate it’s the plant equivalent of cool lemonade — refreshing and effervescent.

The only danger, as this shrub ages and gets rangier, is that the branches can sometimes snap off in autumnal gales. It is also a beast to propagate, but generally I get two or three cuttings through from about 20. Should I lose my original, a cutting will take five years to fill the gap. It’s a useful thing in winter, being an evergreen, and I leave the old heads on until spring because the delicate upturned umbrella spokes catch the frost. Then in late February I snip them off, because I have about five alpine clematis twining through the branches. They include ‘Propertius’ and ‘Jacqueline du Pré: the former is a double pink and cream tutu and the latter a silver-lined single deep pink. These spring-flowering clematis look very dead and twiggy in winter: having them scrambling through an evergreen camouflages them well. The canopy of the shrub keeps the nearby soil well drained in winter, something Atragene clematis, the ones that flower in April as the leaves open, rely on. When the flowers are out the soft grey-green foliage sets them off well too. Most of my garden is too damp for Atragenes, due to the spring which flows under the soil, so this partnership is a winner for me and it could be for you. Try Burncoose Nurseries — www.burncoose.co.uk/01209 860316.