IF YOUR garden is start-ing to look decidedly threadbare towards the end of summer, why not cheer yourself up with a visit to Little Court, at Crawley near Winchester

This is a tranquil country garden, with lots of late flowering and drought-resistant plants. It will lift your spirits and also give you lots of ideas for improving your own garden through August, September and October.

The owners, Professor Andrew Elkington and Mrs Patricia Elkington, work together to maintain this spacious garden of one-and-a-half acres.

The immaculate straight-edged lawns are Professor Elkington's speciality. They are surrounded by wide borders, with pink, white and purple flowers in profusion, and ancient gar-den walls clothed in honeysuckle, late-flower clematis and many other climbers.

"I like to think of it as informal planting within a formal frame," said Mrs Elkington. "All the plants are related to their neighbours by colour, shape and form. Many people comment on the harmonious planting and I think this is what gives the garden its peaceful atmosphere."

The spectacular dark hued agapanthus, grown beneath the house wall, are a special feature at this time of year, and there are countless other details to delight you, such as the ivy clad tree stump cut into the shape of an armchair referred to as "the throne", and the small sunken pond, which Mrs Elkington calls the "frog farm". I also liked the "birthday cake" - a round arrangement of house leeks, with flower stalks which look exactly like candles.

Beneath the trees, the delicate autumn flowering cyclamen are now in bloom - and further on still there are lovely open views from the far end of the garden.

The chalky soil has been greatly improved over the years by the addition of compost, but it remains free draining and inclined to dry out in the summer. It is interesting to see varieties of drought-resistant hardy geraniums, eryngiums, herbaceous lavatera, alliums, michaelmas daisies and many other plants flowering in this fairly dry environment.

Vegetables flourish in their own walled garden, although some crops are still maturing, as Crawley is 300 feet above sea level. The soil takes time to warm up in the spring, making the whole garden calendar a little later than in warmer parts of the county.

At this time of year, you will be able to see four varieties of climbing beans, courgettes, squash, marrows and many other mouth-watering goodies.

Converted for the new archive on 25 January 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.