Pinks and blues

One of the best perennials that I have planted this season must be the echinacea. Since the first bud formed weeks ago, it hasn't stopped flowering. This is what it looks like now:


The astilbe has only recently started to flower. It needed the occasional rain that we've had recently, I think; it's a plant for moist soils, often thriving in boggy terrain next to ponds:


The weekend before last we bought this fuchsia, lovely pink and purple pendulums and variegated foliage that livens up the border:



Finally, beautiful blue and purple morning glories - all the way from the south of France! We were given the seeds last summer by lovely belle-mere, and they seem to be flourishing although it's much less sunny here... Not this year, though! This is a very good UK summer! :)

A haven for wildlife

This is one of the essential attributes of my dream garden, and I'm happy to say that in the height of summer, we have achieved it. (Not counting our two wild felines that prowl the garden fearlessly (except during fireworks, which, admittedly, happen more in late autumn and winter)).

A little wasp in the white African daisy (osteospermum):



A ladybird, wasp and hoverfly on a bronze fennel flower. Yes, I have wanted the colours in the garden to be just pinks and purples, but this plant is mostly purple; also, the yellow flowerheads are very attractive to pollinating insects, so I just have to live with the colour clash! ;)




Ladybirds - adult and larva:




Finally, one of the stalking cats in the bottom right corner. The trellis has now been covered with honey-scented sweet peas and purple morning glories.

Three bumblebees and one honey bee...

... buzz into a bar. I mean, lavender! That was the largest number of (beneficial) insects I've seen on one plant yet. Sadly, they didn't all want to model for the photo...


If we're looking for the non=-beneficial insects, then they are to be found on the sweet peas. The plants are covered in greenfly, and when I first noticed that I started removing the little buggers (there's something deeply satisfying in sliding a finger-breadth of them off a stem, then squeezing!). However, there was a ladybird there, busily eating her way through the aphids, and I realised that for a fully organic garden I need to provide some pests for the predators to enjoy. So now the sweet peas (which, BTW, smell really nice) have greenfly *and* baby ladybirds (AKA garden crocodiles, as they look like ugly, tiny reptiles with big jaws before they turn into the familiar cute, red bug).

Courgettes are being productive, and we're still harvesting them regularly. Here's a pic of stuffed veggies (the aubergines were from a shop) a la Provancale (just meat, herbs and spices, chopped veg flesh and an egg to bind the filling together) that proved very popular on Facebook! :)

Blustery Day

It's on days like this that I worry about our dilapidated fence. It hasn't been this windy since the winter, and strong gusts have already tipped over the Jerusalem artichoke containers. I have heard about that problem, and the solution - cutting them down to 1.5m - so that's what I have done. Now the 'chokes are much shorter, and the compost heap is much bigger!

Before:


After:



Today is also "I found the macro function on the camera" day! ;) So here are the scabious, echinacea and clematis.








And the lavender/pelargonium/mints sandwich!

Something to make us go "Awww"

Sleepy kitteh:

Shock, horror!

Slugs... menace to society! And beautiful gardens. There are some plants that just serve as bait, plain and simple, and cannot thrive in a garden where there are slugs (especially of the giant orange variety, thumb-knuckle sized). In my old garden, snails were the main culprits: lupins were always munched within days of planting them; hostas would last longer, but look torn, tatty and miserable; ranunculus seedlings disappeared overnight.

Somewhat unfortunately for our aesthetic sensibilities, slugs are also part of the circle of life in the Dream Garden. Everything that grows must ultimately die (and be recycled into wonderfully rich, live-sustaining compost, but that's a different blog post) - but, sometimes, beautiful plants are helped along by tiny molluscs. Some go slowly, like this once furry sage, Salvia argentea, which took weeks of steady nibbling (and despite regular slug removal - we picked off and destroyed at least 3-5 slugs every evening) to get to this skeletal form:


And then, there are overnight jobs, like with this lobelia (which can be seen on the left hand side of the rose in the previous post). I only missed one evening of watering, as the day had been damp enough, and 48 hours after seeing it in its full glory, it was gone:


Now, you may be asking what am I doing about the slug problem. Well, I pick them up whenever I see any (and usually get my SO to squish them); and I'm learning what plants they like/adore/hunger for, so I wouldn't place them in garden soil in the future. If I still want to grow those plants (as I do with the furry sage and the lemony pale hosta), I will plant them in pots which will be well protected with copper wire barriers. Copper is toxic to molluscs (this is true even for marine types) and a circle of thin electricians wire or even pennies is traditionally used to protect sensitive plants.

Slug pellets? The answer is no. They are toxic to all life, not just slugs and snails, so could be dangerous for the cats. Also, if a bird was to eat a poisoned slug it would die too... Poison pellets are definitely not environmentally friendly.

Midsummer Dream

Whilst the English rose "Gertrude Jekyll" is still flowering its pretty socks off, the first bloom has appeared on "Zephirine Drouhin". In this picture, with dew drops from the hosepipe, you can see the Bay laurel and lobelia cardinalis in the background:



The flowering racemes of the butterfly bush have started to open too; they have an intoxicating scent of honey:


Here is the Phygelius we recently bought, already in flower - the plant info says it should continue to do so throughout the summer:


Finally, here's the veggie border with the mounds of courgette and squash plants, and the Jerusalem artichokes taller than my 6'4" SO!