While we have been having all our lovely hot sunshine, more and more butterflies have been arriving in the garden. Some I have been able to photograph, some are too skittish and fly away as soon as I get near them. We had Orange Tips and Brimstones earlier in the year and a few weeks ago had Common Blue and Holly Blue, but no photographs unfortunately. I’ll start with our friend from the Channel Islands, the Jersey Tiger Moth.
Up in the air.
I keep mentioning the pergola which goes up to the fruit and veggie area, I thought it was about time to show the planting round it and up it. It has the pond to the right of it with spring flowering shrubs, to the left is a shady border , between the pergola and the field next door, with mainly hydrangeas which are flowering now and a huge Bramley apple tree which we inherited. Most of the uprights have a rose and clematis up them, some have 2 clematis and one has a Trachelospermum jasminoides.
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Tagged climbers, climbing roses, hydrangeas, pergola, Trachelospermum Jasminoides, viticella clematis
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It has been so hot and dry. EOM view July.
In places, the garden is suffering, when the rhododendron leaves hang down vertically, it is time to give some extra water. As I have mentioned in the past, we are on a water meter and have to pay for every drop of water we use, we chose to have a meter many years ago and our bills halved. Normally we can manage with just the water we have in the water butts, only the fruit and veg get watered with a hose, but when the weather is so hot and humid for so long, then plants begin to suffer as well as us! Some perennials have been cut down and I know that they will sprout again, they aren’t a problem, but when quite large bushes are gasping for a drop of rain, I have to react and out come the buckets. This is the time that rhododendrons and camellias will abort their flower buds, with the result we won’t have any flowers next spring, hopefully we have caught them in time.
Perfume on the breeze in the night.
Last week when we were having thunder and lightning after we had gone to bed, I woke with the noise and the lightning flashing round the room, someone else slept through it all! Even though the window was wide open, it still felt too hot with the curtains closed. I got up to open them and was greeted with the most delightful perfume which I recognised straight away, the honeysuckle over the arbour in the gravel garden at the back.
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Tagged Elephant Hawk moth, Honeysuckle, night time perfume, perfume on the breeze
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Foliage for July GBFD.
Thanks to Christina, we are now focusing on the foliage in our gardens. Flowers are everywhere and it is hard to focus on the leaves, but some of them are so beautiful, it is a shame they get overlooked in summer.
Alchemilla mollis always catches the eye after a shower of rain, or even a thunderstorm which we had the other night, complete with lightning.
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Tagged Ferns, foliage, grasses, july foliage, perennials, succulents, vegetables
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July is the month for …..Day lilies.
More and more day lilies or Hemerocallis, open their flowers during the month of July. They bring such colour to the borders while the roses are having a rest before flowering again. They are so easy to grow and don’t seem to mind my heavy soil which is good. When I find something that likes it, I try to find any cousins of theirs that might also enjoy the same conditions, hence I seem to have gathered quite a few over the years, but can’t remember many of their names unfortunately.
This is a small one that is on the rockery by the alpine scree.
Red, White and Blue. G.B.B.D July
When taking photographs for July’s Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, it dawned on me how many flowers there were in the garden, in the British patriotic colours of red, white and blue. Crocosmia Lucifer has just started flowering up by the pond and takes the eye as soon as you step into the garden by the back door.
Backlit by the sun, some of the petals look yellow.
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Tagged blue flowers, Flowers for July, patriotic colours and flowers, red flowers, white flowers
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It can’t be 48 years!
It can though. Forty eight years ago today, there we were, young and innocent, getting married! We have just had a lovely day out visiting a garden in the Dartmoor area and then having a fantastic lunch in a nearby hostelry. The under gardener managed to find a super garden, Winsford Walled Garden, he did well, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It has been an historic productive garden from 1890’s but abandoned during the war.It has been recently restored and records show that it was formerly an exotic flower garden.
I could tell straight away that this was going to be a good one.
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Tagged Bearslake Inn, Dartmoor, Dartmoor ponies., garden visiting, Winsford Walled Garden
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Not a flower to be seen, or not many.
In an area which doesn’t feature very often on this blog, are our fruit and vegetables. Even though this is in the highest part of the garden, before we changed it, it was also one of the wettest areas apart from where we have made the bog garden. This view is from right at the top, looking back to the pergola which leads back to the garden.
We soon realised that any root vegetables would just rot, therefore the under gardener had the job of making some raised beds before we could start. Continue reading
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Tagged black currants, broad beans, courgettes, french beans, Gooseberries, Pears, red currents, Rhubarb, runner beans, sweetcorn
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A wander round the garden. EOMV June.
When we used to open our garden for the National Garden Scheme, it was always in June that we opened it, as all the borders were putting on a display of flowers. Some areas peak at different times, like the woodland, but even so there is something flowering there. For this month’s EOMV I will go for a wander round the garden, photographing mainly long views, to show as much of the borders as possible. I will start by the drive in the front with the Bee and Butterfly border starting down by the gate.
The agapanthus and three buddlias are nearly out, so soon there will be lots of blue, pink and purple added to the other flowers.