June has heralded the start of the rose season. I grow quite a lot of roses and one of my favourites is Rosa Leda by the front gate. It looks wonderful and smells amazing as I wander up the path when I get home from work.
The other side of the gate is the magnolia which now has the pink geranium underneath it starting to flower. It brightens this rather dark space.
The knot garden is moving from being a '(k)not quite' to a 'very nearly'. The box is looks hedgy and the sweet peas are starting to flower. I remain pleased with it, which is something I had thought I might never be.
The border by the front door is looking quite good too, there is a marvelous foxglove and the Rosa Gertrude Jekyll is scrambling up by the front door beautifully. It took it a year or two to settle in but now it feels like it has got into its stride.
The gravel garden is expanding itself well. Very little of it is planted on purpose, most of the planting is self-seeded wanderers.
Moving on through to the back garden, this has now exploded into growth.
The veg beds are doing very well. I have already harvested two (yes two) asparagus spears plus some mange tout. Yes I have become a person who eats mange tout, who ever thought that such a grown-up thing would happen to me? The peas are almost ready to start harvesting and the broad beans are not far behind. I am yet to get a flower on the courgettes or cobra beans but they are close. My main thoughts at the moment about the veg beds is whether I grow too many potatoes. I love growing them, they are fun but they do take up a lot of room. I am seriously considering not growing them next year and just growing more pickable veg.
The pleached hornbeams almost look pleached, they need a bit of sorting at the moment but I am really pleased with how these trees have developed this year. This is partly due to the trees getting larger and partly due to me finding out more what I need to be doing.
The Four Sisters are growing well. I am particularly pleased with the Edgeworthia as it is still alive and is putting on rather large leafage. I have fed it a couple of times with liquid seaweed to encourage it to stay alive.
If I turn around from the Four Sisters I can look down the Long Shoot. Ignore the length of the grass, it rained last weekend and I'm busy this weekend, it might get cut on Monday evening if I can. The length of the grass though does enable the daisies, clover and buttercups to put on a good show, so I am not really that bothered that it is a little shaggy.
The Pond Border is a doing very well. The geraniums are adding color. The roses are just starting to open and the poppies are on the verge of doing their thing.
It is a good year for foxgloves, this year I have many and they are good colours. I do like a good foxglove.
The Coal Bunker border is also doing well. The Eschscholzia californica is lighting it up with orange, all self-seeded from last year.
The Conservatory Border is also doing well, the oriental poppies are nearly over and will be cut right down, leaves and all, as soon as the flowers are finished. This tidies them up as they get rather straggly and if I am lucky I might get a second flush of flowers later in the year. The rheum is still adding great structure too.
The Nigella is flowering away in a sea of blue in the Pond Border. I let it run riot a bit, but I pull it up when I need to clear some space to plant something new.
The Spring Border is sort of sitting back a bit at the moment, it not being Spring any more means its moment is sort of past. The welsh poppies add color and there is a Rosa Winchester Cathedral in the corner, so it is not completely dull. I also planted two blue meconopsis in this border the other day and I have high hopes for them. They, like the Edgeworthia, are also still alive, which is 100% more hopeful than I had been of either of them.
The Prairie Borders look wonderful in the evening sun, it was quite late in the day when I took these photographs. The self-seeded verbascum have been edited so that just a few remain, but they have placed themselves well.
The Tree Lupin border is a bit in-between times too. The woad is basically finished. I have dead-headed a lot of it but some veils of seeds remain. The purple orach is popping up nicely and whilst I remove a lot of it, enough remains to make nice points of color.
I have planted a lot of dahlias, tithonias, zinnias, malope and cleome in this border, I am expecting a riot of color. Every year I expect a riot of color yet it always falls short of what I want. This year, this year it will work. I am determined to get this right this year! (I will report back.....)
These white peonies are in one of the corners of the Tree Lupin border and just look wonderful with the pink geranium. They sprawl together well.
Just by the Dancing Lawn this rose is climbing up the apple tree. It is a great rose, smells wonderful and has huge pink flowers. Shame I don't know its name.
The Wild Garden, that runs up alongside the Dancing Lawn and around to the top of the garden is looking quite wild. The flowers are starting to appear now and the grass is really tall this year. Sadly it is also quite flat in places and I think I might have to scythe some back soon earlier than usual. I will think about this, but it will not unflatten.
The new planting in the Bog Garden is doing quite well. There are still gaps but I think it the planting will thicken up ok. I am very pleased with the ferns who all seem to be settling in well.
Around the back of the Bog Garden is the Woodland Border. That is doing very well this year. There are a few poppies and a few foxgloves and I think it has come on quite well over the past couple of years.
For some reason I rarely photograph from this angle. This looks from the edge of the Prairie Borders, down past the Spring Borde which is on the left along the side towards the Bramley tree. The Pond border wraps around to the right of the photograph and it looks down across the formal lawn. I want to reshape the formal lawn a bit, I'm not quite happy with it at the moment so that is a plan in the hatching.
I end as is traditional at the pond. The pond is reasonably full for this time of year which is a good thing from all the recent rain. I have already counted at least three discarded cases from dragonfly larvae, this makes me very happy. There are still some tadpoles in the pond and occassionally I see Tiny the newt. As I often say, the pond makes me very happy.Thanks as ever to Helen for hosting this meme. Hard to think that next month will be July, I am sure I have lost a month or two this year.
