The autumn-sown sweet peas began to flower as June began, earlier than spring sowings. These plants had looked so feeble early this year, as if resenting being forced to grow through a chilly Yorkshire winter. Once the weather warmed up they began to thicken up and grow stronger, and this week I could cut the first few blooms. They are mainly the old-fashioned non-frilly varieties, "Matucana" and "Painted Lady", with a few "Chatsworth" (lilac) and "Valentine" (white) - more frilly, but less scented.
The Alllium
christophii have also recently opened, following on from the May-blooming
Allium "Purple
Sensation". A purple-blue hardy geranium, which I think is Geranium
magnificum, has bloomed in the last few days, and its blooms thread through
the pink alliums. Delphiniums in various shades of blue are opening. As
the longest day approaches, the light comes into the garden in the evenings
and lights this central flowerbed.
It's rained a lot, and this has bashed down the heavy flowerheads of the
Peony, which
always look too heavy for their stems, and don't flower for long, but
their very brevity makes them all the more special - a symbol of June
itself, and the year reaching its peak in the light evenings before the
longest day.
Solanum
crispum "Glasnevin" has been flowering since last month,
and its display continues unabated, with more buds still to bloom. I'm
pleased it looks so robust and splendid, as I need it to fill the gap
left by a pruned-almost-to-the-ground Clematis montana.
They're called "montana" because in the wild they grow up
mountainsides. If this isn't officially true, it should be. I spent the
early part of June wrestling with Clematis montanas, which should be pruned
just after they've flowered. If you miss a year you find yourself reeling
in tendrils about 6 metres long, the kind of tendrils that when you pull
them snap off tree branches they've wrapped themselves around. My pruning
of the three that grow in this garden produced 2 full car-loads of "green
waste" for the tip. It also resulted in a nasty snapped branch incident,
bad temper, and RSI of my secateur hand.
In the front gardens of a new housing development very close by, someone
has, it seems, planted a Clematis montana in the landscaped front gardens.
I think they must have done this as a cruel joke, as the Clematis is planted
against a wall just over a metre high. I can see a disgruntled landscape
gardener thinking "aha, I'll put this in, and they'll have to come
out here every week and prune it, while it sends out 6 metre-long tendrils
overnight while they're asleep, and eventually wraps itself across the
front door so they can't escape, ha ha!"
At last, our mini-lawn looks healthy, and like proper turf, and though it's not going to win a best-kept lawn competition, it is at last something that I don't feel I have to stand in front of to hide it if anyone comes to visit. I could almost hide it all by standing in front of it - it is that small.
It's 9.40pm, and still light, with an amazing sunset that is casting a glow over the garden. The clouds are lit from underneath and have the look of clouds in oil paintings. The kind of paintings where the artist wanted the viewer to think about heaven and the majesty of creation.
In equally perfect shades of blue, and purple, the delphiniums
are still flowering, and I do love them, particularly at the end of the
day, when blue and purple flowers look so good. I know I bought "Black
Knight", and a variety in a sky blue colour, but I also seem to have a
white form, and, appearing unexpectedly this year, a truly splendid cobalt-blue
variety, which I guess came in with the batch of Black Knight. I'm not
complaining about this mislabelling, as it was an amazing colour.
The delphiniums don't have big heavy flowerheads - not being a delphinium
expert I don't know if this is something to do with my cultivation of
them, or just the way these varieties are - I think though I prefer
these more subtle and airy blooms, which haven't needed lots of string
and sticks to keep them upright.
I did remember though, this year, to do most of the necessary plant staking, and can see in some areas that the sticks and string around plants has stopped them flopping about and crowding out things around them. One or two things I can see I supported too low down, underestimating their growth. These however are flopping so elegantly now I think it's maybe best to leave them be.
The light at this time of year is fantastic, particularly in the evenings,
which seem to find me out in the garden until around 10pm. In the early
evening - other commitments permitting - I'm watering or deadheading or
just staring at things and listening to the swifts
flying overhead. Later as dusk descends there's even less actual gardening
and even more aimless wandering. Marvellous. What June evenings were made
for.
There are so many things flowering now, and more in bud, eagerly awaited.
After a wet start to June, things warmed up a bit and dried off, and now
the plants that need sun have begun to look happier. Silvery foliage has
turned properly silver, and the Nasturtiums have begun to develop flowerbuds.
The dahlias have begun at last to look like they might do something before
the autumn. One of them is flowering already, because I cheated, and got
a well-grown specimen of "Bishop
of Landaff" from a local garden centre.
Much less showy, indeed not conventionally showy at all, are the flowers
that have recently appeared on my Iris
foetidissima, growing in Woodland
Corner. This plant will apparently grow anywhere, so is no doubt taken
for granted, like most "good doers" are. The flowers are maybe not flamboyant,
but I found them exquisite and fascinating.
Also successful this year are the Crocosmia "Lucifer", which last year
refused to flower, but this year are about to flower, in their new position
the centre of the garden. I was watching the impressive spears of green
foliage rather anxiously, wondering where the flowers were, when a few
days ago in the bright morning sunshine I noticed these amazing tightly-packed
flowerheads bursting from the centre of the leaves.
The colour combinations in this central flowerbed will be interesting,
as this year I deliberately threw in a bit of bright colour, deciding
I was tired of planting the same combinations. Having always been cautious
about colours clashing, I have tried to carefully segregate the brighter
colours from the pastel and "cooler" colours.
The central area was generally pink, blue and purple, and the other
main planting area held the reds, yellows and orange plants. It looked
good that way, but I fancied a change, inspired by Christopher Lloyd's
Colour for Adventurous Gardeners. So red Crocosmia and orange
Heleniums
have been thrown into the midst of those calmer, cooler colours. There
may be a hideous orange-magenta clash later in the season. Possibly
too adventurous to be viewable without feeling queasy, in which case
I'll have to stand a big green hosta between them, or something.
This week saw young coal tits zipping about the garden and demanding to be fed by their rather tatty-feathered and exhausted-looking parent. There were definitely two young, and possibly as many as four.
Broken snail shells around the paths in the garden suggest there are
thrushes in the area, and a robin
was sighted briefly in the garden in the last week.
Most notable this month was a brief appearance by a bird I haven't seen
since childhood - a bullfinch - which landed on the trellis screen very
close to the kitchen windows as I was washing the pots, before disappearing
equally suddenly.
There should be a lot of blackbirds also, as the resident pair have had
two nests. My photos of the first blackbird emerging from the first nest
are now available on the blackbirds
nesting page (which I do hope you'll have a look at, as I hung about
on a ladder for ages, with you the website visitor in mind). (I hope my
OBE is in the post.)
Back to June highlights and diaries