I’ve been skipping about today because the sun is shining and we have gorgeous butterflies in the garden. Butterflies feed on lots of different types of plants but seem to love these nectar rich flowers in particular. They cluster together on our Buddleja shrubs which have thousands of tiny flowers full of nectar.
June is THE month for roses and there are some lovely pale pink roses blooming this month.
Rosa ‘Paul’s Himalayan Musk’ is a rambling rose growing through the Oak Tree in front of my garden studio.
There are a couple of shrub roses too in the Summer Border. I am sorry to say I have lost track of their names although I distinctly remember writing them on a plan of the border and tucking it away somewhere safe!
I particularly love the rose below which is laden with blooms each year.
There’s nothing quite like the scent of roses to take me back to the summers of my childhood. Gaggles of giggling children performed puppet shows and plays for patient adults, we made dens and stayed outside for hours until we were hauled inside for hot baths and of course we developed our own range of perfume from fallen petals.
Do roses bring back memories for you?
I’m linking with Cathy at Rambling in the Garden today for In a Vase on Monday.
Woo Hoo! Summer is here and there’s so much looking good in the garden this week. The biennials I’ve grown from seed are flowering their socks off and early flowering perennials are making their debut too. However the stars in my garden this week are a couple of shrubs. Viburnum opulus ‘Roseum’ and Lilacs of course. In our garden they are both at their peak right now.
In the UK there’s not much in flower at this time of year. Mid-winter is the time that most of us rely on colourful stems, bark and berries for colour in our gardens. Evergreen shrubs with interesting leaves are good too. They are hardy and reliable and for most of the year can be left alone to get on with providing a permanent framework for your star flowering plants.
After the rain the sun came out.
A row of the most beautiful creamy white Hydrangeas greeted me at a plant nursery the other day. Hydrangea panicuata ‘Silver Dollar’ is widely available… but these plants made such a good show because they were all lovely large specimens. It makes a change to see such big healthy plants in full bloom. They flower from August until mid- autumn and the as they age the petals develop a pink tinge. They will grow to around 1.2m/4 feet tall.