Traviata outshines the English sun, while Hampton's gardens seem confused beneath it

It's been a remarkable summer in England. Consistently clement since early May, memories of our miserably wet winter and spring's surprise snows have been banished by an atmosphere that feels positively Mediterranean. The smell of barbecue lingers constantly in the air. Gardeners report bumper crops of berries. Pub gardens are packed. The national team is still playing in football's World Cup. Commuters into The City have shifted down to Bermuda shorts, polo shirts and deck shoes.

It is, of course, not all good news. The global warming that's brought this weather is wreaking havoc in more extreme climes. Arguably, as we down another Pimms in our sultry gardens we're fiddling while Rome burns. Water companies are having difficulty processing enough supply to meet demand. A large chunk of Saddleworth Moor is burning and brush fires closer to home are disrupting the train network. An unexpected carbon dioxide shortage is endangering the supply of fizzy drinks, meat and packaged salad. Worst of all, in a country where the average summer high is just 18C (66F), air conditioning is rare. Our buildings are designed to retain heat. Public transport rarely offers more than a weak fan. Any temperature beyond 27C (80F) turns London into a miserable heat trap. The underground system is like the sixth circle of Dante's hell.

One inevitable effect: the weather has eclipsed all else in our consciousness. Longborough Festival Opera's La Traviata was both one of the most innovative and enjoyable productions they've ever staged, but our sun-burnished picnic and worries about surviving the heat in the un-air-conditioned opera house dominated. At the Hampton Court Flower show, finding shady places to drink and rest exerted a more powerful pull than the show gardens.

LOVE AT LONGBOROUGH
That Traviata deserves to be remembered, however. It is, of course, an opera that rarely disappoints.
Verdi's tale of the the scarlet woman who proves herself the most virtuous of all, then dies for love, is one of the genre's most enduring crowd pleasers. It's also packed with one exquisite tune after another, making it one of opera's most approachable productions. (Indeed, it was delightful to see several families bringing children to this show.) Director Daisy Evans' re-imagining of the story as the tale of an exhausted, clinically depressed Marilyn Monroe type in 1950s Hollywood was fascinating and worked surprisingly well. The party scenes in acts 1 and 2 were re-imagined onto film sets, with action bouncing between "filming" of movie scenes and the between-take banter of the actors and crew. This was particularly effective when we got to the gypsy and matador sections at Flora's party in Act 2, which usually seem bolted on to give the chorus and corps de ballet something to do. Here, instead, it was riveting as our heartbroken heroine tried to stumble through the "movie" she was supposed to be making as her world collapsed.

The references to Marilyn Monroe were obvious (though soprano Anna Patalong looks more like Maria Callas than the blond bombshell), and the shift of Violetta's death to an irreversable overdose rather than the traditional tuberculosis made everything seem more real. Her final cry of "I want to live" plugged into the poignancy of every soul who's ever squandered their life, then realised they wanted redemption when it was too late to take it. Patalong is one of the best sopranos I've ever heard at Longborough, with a real star quality that enhanced ... or what enhanced by? ... this particular role. Her acting was as fine as her singing, giving us a persuasive picture of a mentally-fragile woman imploding. My only complaint: her compelling death scene played out from the floor, where much of the audience couldn't see her over the tops of the heads in the next row.

Peter Gijsbertsen sang a wonderful Alfredo, entirely credible as he rockets from adoration through betrayal and regret. In fact, all of the voices were top notch and the acting equally compelling; something essential in Longborough's intimate space where facial expressions, or lack of them, are glaringly obvious. The Hollywood trope also provided the costume department with an unusually bright moment in the spotlight. From the Marie Antoinette setting of the first "movie" to the black and white surrealist of the second, with gorgeous late-'50s looks to tie it all together, they gave us a feast for the eyes.

LIFESTYLE AT HAMPTON
Having survived the hottest Hampton Court Flower Show on record three years ago, we had a plan for this one. Go slowly. Pause often for rest and liquid. Make no attempt to see it all. Instead, compile a short list of shopping needs in advance and stick to it. It was efficient, though expensive, as I was completing the garden furniture hunt I'd begun at Chelsea. Some unusual pelargoniums to complete my Cordoba-inspired patio wall, a few showy dahlias and one clematis to to fill specific blank spaces followed. On the whole, I was a master of restraint.

As if anticipating our unusual hot spell, this year's gardens evoked warmer, dryer places. The best in show garden featured so many impatiens and semi-tropicals that I felt like I was back in Texas. Other gardens featured palms and bananas, canna lilies and grasses, garish yellows and flaming oranges. The soft pastels and lazy drifts of England's green and pleasant land weren't much in evidence this year. The other big trend was "lifestyle gardens". Outdoor rooms with fireplaces, kitchens, bars and clusters of furniture, with block planting more notable for its decorative effect than its horticultural interest. Too many gardens this year looked like the landscaping in corporate hotel chains. Pretty, but uninspiring.

In recent years the concept gardens have become the most noteworthy part of the show. They're not all beautiful, but they do make you think. Witness the garden making a point about de-forestation of the Amazon: you started in a walled enclosure full of Amazonian plants, moved on to another full of tree stumps, then to an empty abattoir still stained with blood, ending in a processing pen where one plant struggles up through the sand floor. In case you missed it in the heavy-handed setting, the main reason the Amazon is disappearing is to feed the growing South American desire for meat.

Both beautiful and thought provoking was a garden commenting on the dangers of social media addiction. At the front, a normal suburban garden with a ragged lawn scattered with toys and some surrounding borders in need of attention. Someone's abandoned an iPhone on a table. The back of this plot is outlined by a giant iPad frame. Step through it to the very kind of lifestyle garden we've seen elsewhere in the show. Everything is perfect. But look closely! The grass is plastic, the flowers silk, the hanging chair would be impossible to get in and out of. It's a beguiling but unobtainable illusion, as are ... the designers imply ... most of the posts on social media we're led to believe are typical slices of our friends' lives.

My favourite garden in this section, and in the show, made a simpler point. On the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, a large plot started with dusty, grim trenches and morphed into an exquisitely-planted wildflower meadow. Out of anger comes beauty. Time heals. And, it turns out, in the middle of a sun-drenched English heat wave, a wildflower meadow both survives well, and looks like it belongs here.