Garden Bloggers Bloom Day August 2011

Another 15th of the month and another chance to illustrate what is flowering in my Plymouth garden.  As always, visiting May Dreams Garden blog will give you access to all the other gardens linking today.

As before, I'm including some of the more interesting plants and, while the photos have not all been taken today, the plants are all in flower today.  

Roscoea beesiana - another pretty little ginger for semi shade

Agapanthus 'Northern Star' - a robust deciduous type with large heads of dark blue flowers

Japanese anemone - Anemone x hybrida 'Honorine Jobert'

Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora - a bit weedy but good for bright colour in shade

Geranium 'Buxton's Blue' - a nice clump forming hardy geranium

Geranium wlassovianum - another good clump former

Lobelia 'Fan Scarlet' - short lived but very pretty perennials

Rosa 'Graham Thomas' - one of the English shrub roses

Tillandsia cyanea - in my little shade house

Clematis texensis 'Princess of Wales' - providing secondary colour on my winter jasmine

Trachelospermum jasminoides - beautifully scented evergreen climber growing by the rear garden gate

Begonia boliviensis 'Bonfire' - a summer visitor dying back to a tuber for overwintering

12 previously unillustrated plants for August.  A lot of the plants I've previously illustrated are still flowering - Passiflora edulis, Abutilon 'Patrick Synge', Freesia laxa, Iochroma grandiflora, Brugmansia, Hydrangeas and many others.  I wonder if I'll have 12 new ones to illustrate in September?

Some views of the garden - Part 2

Following on from my views of that part of the rear garden that's fit to illustrate here's some shots of the front garden.  This space is quite small - about 9 x 6 metres - 30 ft x 18ft, bounded by a garden wall and a retaining wall to prevent the slope sliding into the house.  It's shaded by the high house wall and various trees and shrubs - including Acer 'Bloodgood', Camellia 'St Ewe' and Magnolia 'Raspberry Ice'.  I've terraced it using breeze blocks and log roll to provide a set of planting areas in which I can grow a good many smaller shade lovers.  Over the years it's grown ever more lush and it's a constant battle to keep things within bounds.  My biggest thugs are three plants that a lot of exotic gardeners would love to have survive in their own gardens, never mind thrive.  Adiantum venustum, the hardy maidenhair fern, is slowly but inexorably producing quite a substantial patch.  Begonia grandis ssp evansiana is absolutely hardy with me.  The pink flowered form spreads itself around by the small bulbils produced in the autumn and is now taking up too much of the bed.  Because it doesn't sprout till late spring it can safely occupy the ground where I've got various bulbs - erythroniums, snowdrops and others - but it's starting to encroach on other plantings and needs controlling.  Saxifraga stolonifera - normally seen as the houseplant 'Mother of Thousands' - creeps around all over the bed and, again, needs controlling. 

Enough verbiage.  Here's some pictures.  Click for larger images:

The purple flowered plant in  the last two pictures is a hardy ginger, Roscoea purpurea.  I'll be illustrating this for the garden blogger's bloom day on Friday.  The beautiful variegated shrub is Pieris 'Flaming Silver', gorgeous all year but especially beautiful in April when the bright red new leaves flush.  This is about twelve years old now - they are slow growing!  Variegated Phormium tenax can be seen on the left of the final picture - with 'Lucifer' in front.  It does get everywhere.