My Little Garden 30th July 2022
It’s only the first week of the school holidays, but time seems to be running away with me. There has been childminding, gardening, photography visits and ‘just like that’ we’ve arrived at the weekend. The last weekend in July in fact. How did that happen…
After several days of rain here ‘up north’, the grass in my garden is looking very green and most of the plants have perked up. If I’m being a bit picky, I feel slightly dissatisfied that some of my reliably ‘good doers’ like the geraniums have had to be cut back earlier than usual. This is normal for the likes of ‘Splish Splash’ and ‘Cloud Nine’, but ‘Ann Folkhard’ and ‘Anne Thomson’ usually carry on providing a bright splash of colour until the asters of a similar colour take over. And the achillea has been so pathetic that I think I’m going to give up with it. I suspect my soil isn’t ‘well drained’ enough, so as much as I like the colour of ‘Cerise Queen’, perhaps I need to admit defeat.
Anyway, enough of the failures and let’s look at six things that are doing well right now.
- Alliums
These are my success story of 2022 and it may well be the third week that I’ve gone on about them. The bees love them and they look great in a clump at the front of the border. What I need is a bit of contrast after the salvia have finished their main flowering. It was supposed to be the achillea!
2. Nicotiana
As I was a bit lazy on the seed sowing front this year, I bought some nicotiana plants from the local garden centre. I like the two colours together.
3. Pelargonium
A good splash of bright pink that works well with the nicotiana.
4. Catananche caerulea
I’ve wanted to grow this for a while, and as I mentioned the other week, some lawn has been sacrificed to grow it.
Here it is mingling happily with Nassella tenuissima. A little bit more lawn will be sacrificed next year to allow it more space.
5. Hydrangea
This is ‘Little Lime’ which is a perfect size for a small garden and at the moment is dressed in it’s best colour. It goes pinker with age, which is quite interesting, but I prefer the colour of the new flowers.
6. Frilly Knickers
A bit slow to get going this year, but Anemone ‘Frilly Knickers’ is a beauty.
And that’s it for this week, and this month. I’m hoping we don’t hurtle through August in the same way as we did through July, but I guess we just have to go with the flow.
Have a great weekend and thanks as always to The Propagator for starting this. https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/
