Northern Ireland's topsy-turvy weather has produced perfect conditions to watch your garden grow

Incredible temperatures for the time of year have brought people back outside where many will have noticed their gardens have benefitted from the almost constant rainfall of the last two months.

Gardening expert, Robin Mercer, who runs Hillmount Garden Centre, explained: “This has been the worst summer, or the best summer depending on how you look at it, for the grass continuing to grow.

"Usually it gets scorched in the summer heat, it slows down. The same with weeds, with hedges, but the wet weather has meant they’ve kept growing.

"I’ve never seen weeds like it, you could sit and watch them grow.”

He added: “Now the suns out again, we’re into autumn, some of the leaves are starting to turn brown, but still a lot of growth."

Mr Mercer said that it had been a summer of swings and roundabouts: “Gardening-wise it’s probably been the best year ever for growing.

“Usually we’d say to people that July and August are too dry to plant anything whereas this year there has been no problems at all with that. You’re not having to worry about watering, you’re not doing anything at all.

“One of the problems though is the old green slime you get on your paths and your fence, it’s been the worst ever because we haven’t had it burnt off by the sun.

“It’s not been a good summer for sitting in the garden but as far as the plants are concerned it’s been perfect.

“Certain flowers have done better than others – Dahlias, Begonias, they’ve turned out really well, because of the damp weather they’ve lasted longer than normal.

“Every year is different, but this has probably been one of the hardest ever with the weather conditions.”

In terms of the impact on his business Mr Mercer said: “Usually people are having picnics and barbecues but not this summer, so garden furniture and barbecue sales did slow up. But in turn our cafe was so busy over the summer because people weren’t eating outdoors at home.

“Funny enough this morning we sold three barbecues, that’s the difference that comes with a change in the weather.”