My Garden in June

In the Gravel Area:

our sit-and-cuppa place

Long time favourite - Mexican fleabane

dwarf runner beans - slug chewed

one of two hanging baskets

cut and come again salad leaves

the other hanging basket

In the Borders:

Knautia

alpine dianthus

Perpetual wallflower

Oriental poppy

Alpine aster

Wollerton Old Hall rose

foxglove

sea thrift

scabious

lithodora

delphinium

nice arrangement round bird bath

In the Patio Area:

parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

freshly planted - these will flesh out

ditto the hanging baskets - only just planted up

and again just potted up

this basket is coming on nicely

swamped with Susan Williams-Ellis rose

In the Front Garden:

getting better each day

there will be masses of olives this year

Summer Pots and Hanging Baskets

I might be working at this a little early this far north but, as always, I am itching to get the summer pots underway.  The Spring ones were still doing really well and I have kept the left hand one in place with a view to changing it when I see another hanging basket I like at the right price.  Meanwhile on a visit to Dunbar Garden Centre, because I got two fabulous pots from there last year for 'two for twenty',  I found the same deal again this year.  I have no idea how or why it happened but after giving the assistant our customer loyalty card we got two for ten pounds.  These may only look just OK for a fiver each right now but they have the potential for fabulous as time goes on.  What a bargain!

pelargonium, bacopa, petunia, lobeilia

The two spring baskets were still doing really well so I just dropped them into an appropriate size pot where they can continue to flower for a good while yet.

still looking bonny

I then moved on to potting up various pots.  

These Pelargoniums were two for three pounds from Aldi

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I has also bought a selection of hanging basket plants from Dobbies to mix around the pelargoniums.

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Most of these went into pots for the front garden

by the door

under the window

around the tree after squaring off the circle

looking forward to everything being fully grown

Among the collection was a couple of herbs.  I dug up the old parsley and re-arranged the plants in the little herb bed and planted the mint into its own pot to stand on the patio nearby.

I then potted up the chimney after removing the spring planting.  It takes imagination to see this with a huge volume of plants tumbling over the edges but it will come.

The rest of the plants went into two of the six new wooden planters which were bought for the gravel area..

The planters were £12.99 each from Aldi.  We had some delivery issues and some quality issues but eventually they were an OK deal.  

Initially I just put the perforated bags in the planters and tried to fold over the excess liner and to hide beneath the compost.  This didn't work very well.

One was planted with dwarf runner bean seeds and the other with salad leaves seeds.

For the other pair of long planters and the square ones I stapled the top of the liner to the inside edge of the box which gave a much neater finish.

The remaining two long ones were planted with three strawberries in each pot.  They were runners from my very old ever-bearer strawberries which I gave to my daughter a long time ago and are still growing strong.  I have never found a better strawberry and once they start fruiting they really do keep going all summer.

The two square planters were filled with a pelargonium and some trailing lobelia just to echo the pots at the top of the garden on the patio.

The Patio

I think of the garden as being in three parts.  

At the bottom of the garden is the gravel area which is pretty much in sun all day and has a couple of seats and table for those half hours here and there in the summer when you can step out with a cuppa.  

In the middle (and the largest section) is a lawn with a five foot wide border each side; this is pretty much for looking at, although my three year old grandson gets a lot of running around joy out of it. This has very mixed levels of daylight.  It is predominately in shade as the back of house faces North, but it will get some hours of sunshine as we move into summer and the sun is higher in the sky, reducing the shadow of the house.  

Nearest the house is the patio area with seating for four.  This actually got a lot of use during last year's long hot summer as it gave some respite when it was too hot and, to my surprise, proved a very pleasant place to sit in comfortable warmth and minimum squinting.  It does get a little sun in the late afternoon.

The largest and, I hope permanent, plants in this area are some ferns and roses.

The ferns have done their usual browning off and crisping up over winter and I absolutely know I should be cutting off all the rubbish to help the new growth come through but when you have spent an arm and a leg on something it takes nerves of steel to hack away at them.  I promise myself I will do it on the next fine day when I can get into the garden.  It is currently cold and wet.

hart's tongue fern

soft shield fern

Happily its not all doom and gloom out there and this is the right hand  corner which I see all the time from my dining room patio doors.

a bought-in hanging basket

its fraternal twin

a chimney stack which  I planted with some lovely huge primulas

Beneath the hanging baskets is a teeny herb bed which served me very well all last year and has kicked back into life.  Reading left to right:  Rosemary, Sage at the back, Parsley (I have a new plant to replace that), Thyme at the front right edge, the two plants at the forward edge are very healthy chives.  I may take those out as I barely use them.  The mint is grown from new each year in a large pot.  It will replace the dying muscari and daffodils seen here.  I never put mint in the garden as it can be a nightmare to control.

On the other side, seen from my kitchen window is a small rose border and another hanging basket.   The roses were chosen from David Austin as a good 'doer' in shade.  They do seem to be vigorous and flowered for ages last year so I am very pleased with those.  White flowers and scented and will only grow to 3.5 feet tall and 3 feet wide.

three Susan Williams-Ellis

Above the roses is another hanging basket

a bought-in basket ,but different from the ones opposite.

The Christmas tree has survived its re-potting and is putting on new growth.  It should never grow beyond 120 cms/4 feet, so the plan is to bring it round to beside the front door and light and decorate it every year as we did for our first Christmas here last year.

Alberta Spruce - Picea glauca 'Conica'

Wooh, look at those weeds creeping in under the fence - must get to those pdq.