I plant Nasturtiums every year. I love the bright flowers and their distinctive smell – a spicy sort of peppery scent. Their leaves are attractive too. Nasturtiums sprawl and climb and are brilliant for ground cover and filling gaps.
Some people loathe them I know that.
With a name like Heavenly Blue you would expect the flowers on this plant to be gorgeous. And you would be right!
Caryopteris x clandonensis ‘Heavenly Blue’ is a lovely shrub for late summer/early autumn.
In the cutting garden annual flowers are in full production now churning out blooms on a daily basis. It’s like a production line. Annuals are programmed to reproduce by setting seed. Then they die. To prevent them from setting seed you need to pick all the flowers. The more you pick, the more will grow. And that’s brilliant. But there’s another group of plants that are also good for cutting.
There are plenty of butterflies around this summer including some spectacular Peacock butterflies. They like hedgerows and woodland edge type habitats and will happily visit your garden to feed on some of their favourite garden plants such as Buddleja and Verbena which have many tiny tubular flowers arranged in clusters.
Butterflies have been on my mind recently. This week I’ve been investigating the food and habitat they need. It seems that butterflies aren’t the only insects needing our help.
This morning I sat outside in the warm sunshine. I was enjoying my freshly brewed coffee and the beautiful flowers in the Summer Border. I’ve grown lots of Verbena bonariensis from seed this year. It’s a tall airy plant with tiny tubular flowers making up each flower head. Whilst I was observing the garden it seems that some things in the garden were observing me…
It’s official… Buddleja davidii is the best plant for butterflies. Each flower spike contains hundreds of individual flowers all full of nectar to attract butterflies, bees and other pollinating insects.
There are some plants I wouldn’t like to be without in my garden and this is one of them. I love orange flowers… in fact I love everything about Heleniums. In bud they have just a hint of what’s to come. Then the petals unfurl and the huge central disk expands and attracts bees galore.
Every year I grow Cosmos from seed.
It’s hard to believe that something so tall and beautiful can be produced in just a few weeks. Like many annual flowers Cosmos are good for bees and butterflies because they have lovely open flowers… it’s easy for them to feed.
The plants in the Summer border are in full bloom now. Many of them are great for beneficial insects such as bees and hover flies.
One of my favourites is Echinops ritro.
This is a variety called ‘ Veitch’s Blue’. It’s cool silver in bud opening to the most intense blue. It’s dramatic and architectural but also undemanding and very easy to grow.