I seem to have missed a few months of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day but with two weeks of annual leave ahead of me and few plans I find myself finally with time to join in. The garden is entering its second phase of summer color with echinaceas, rudbeckias, crocosmia and asters all opening. The zinnias are just opening, a week later than I had hoped as they were grown for last week’s show!.
I quite like zinnias and I think I might grow them again next year as well as cosmos which I haven’t grown for years and suddenly find myself missing.
The other annual that I am loving at the moment is this nasturium which is making a bid for world domination from the window box. I think this variety has a nice velvet tone to it. The packet of seeds were some old Thompson & Morgan trial seeds I found in the bottom of the box so sadly I don’t know what variety they are.
A new addition to the garden is this Chinese Foxglove. The stem above is one of the shorter ones but the spires are just going over. It has flowered for a month or so and adds a nice contrast to all the daisy type flowers at the moment. Its tender so I will have to dig it up and pot it up for the winter or maybe risk it in the ground with a heavy mulch to protect it.
The Primula florindae has been wonderful since early July. It has had 3 stems of flowers, with two reaching 3ft tall. The strangest thing is I don’t remember where it came from or planting it. I can only assume I tried growing it from seed and discarded the compost and then it decided to show its face. I have three or four young plants which I bought this year not realising that this was growing in the garden so hopefully I can create a nice display for next year.
I thought I would share one of my clumps of violas. I have a growing fondness for them as they are such good doers, flowering for months on end and all you need to do is dead head them and every so often chop them back to prevent them being too scraggly. The one above Viola cornuta Clouded Yellow is almost at the point of needing a good chop back.
And I have cyclamen flowering. I think this is Cyclamen hederifolium but I’m not very sure at all. They too have been flowering for a week or two and I wonder if the low temperatures this summer have confused them.
Finally in complete contrast to the diminutive cyclamen I thought I would share the first flower on the brugmansia with you. Sadly you can see the flower has suffered from the unseasonal weather but hopefully the other buds that are fattening on the plant will benefit from some nicer summer weather.
For Garden Blogger Bloom Day posts from all over the world visit Carol at May Dreams
