After the spring flowers on the uncut lawn area (the mead) we are now beginning to see the appearance of summer grassland flowers – including four species of clovers.
Why would anyone have a mown lawn and miss these pleasures?
Mid-summer’s Day and we were out in the sun, dripping wet searching for birds (successfully) when we passed this garden along Cemetery Lane. Can’t get more high summer than this.
There has been a short hiatus in the garden between the spring flowers, mostly shades of blue some yellow, and the early summer flowering. One of the first is this beautiful white Iris sibirica. A very elegant flower.
This Rhododendron was hidden in a very shady corner of the garden when we moved here in 1998 and was not “doing” at all well. Rhododendrons can handle shade but do like a bit of sunshine. However, in recent years it has decided that as the environment it finds itself in is not going to improve it had better put some effort into making the best of what it has got by itself. This June it really doing rather well – colour in that corner is just what was needed … but oh, what a time we had to wait.
We planted three of these roses in the garden a couple of decades ago. One didn’t last long, crowded out by encroaching dogwoods. Two are still with us but overshadowed and so the leaves and flowers are quite high on bare stems. This chap was planted in the front by an ambitious squirrel and after several years of slow growth is now making a good living.
The flowers come only once and last a bare week but are quite gorgeous. The seed-containing hips are apparently some of the biggest of any rose and a red/orange delight in the fall. really though the rose is grown for its beautiful foliage. It is native to the mountains of central and southern Europe, from Spanish Pyrenees east to Bulgaria, and north to Germany and Poland.
A gorgeous flower just appearing in a constraining planter on the edge of the garden pond. This is a good place for them to be but they are not natives on this continent and if they get out into the wild they form dense mats on the edges of waterways that crowd all the other riverside/lakeside plants that would otherwise be flourishing there.
Quite a spreading clump of these lovely late spring/early summer shade-tolerant anemones hiding in a corner of the garden
Some years ago we had a pot of tiny violas (we allow ourselves the occasional non-native plant in the garden) which set seed and ever since we have enjoyed the offspring emerging from the cracks between stones on the patio.
We allow ourselves a small number of non-native plants in the garden – this is one of the first to bloom.
It can get very hot in the garden but around breakfast time the shade beside the pond is delightful
