Garden Bloggers Blooms Day August 2012

In a small garden it's impossible to grow the diversity of flowering plants that I would if I had more room.  So for the August 2012 Garden Bloggers Blooms Day, kindly hosted by May Dreams Gardens, there are bound to be plants I've illustrated before.  No matter, here's a good sample of what's in flower at the moment.

I'll start with two Agapanthus.  These are both deciduous hybrids, hardy plants - unlike their evergreen cousins - but still desirable.  The paler blue, 'Bressingham Blue', I've had for years, while the more impressive darker blue 'Northern Star' is a more recent acquisition.  No Agapanthus is a particularly fast spreader but this one looks quite vigorous and I look forward to seeing a good clump of this developing in years to come.  I'm revamping the border where it sits this autumn and I think I'll underplant it with some of the bulbs of Allium 'Globemaster' that I've been growing on the allotment for cut flowers.

Agapanthus 'Bressingham Blue'

Agapanthus 'Northern Star'

With my slug and snail population ever eager to munch their way through anything soft and fleshy I have difficulty with Dahlias but 'Procyon' has run the gauntlet and is now producing quite a good display.  I do like the colour combination - and it survives my winters in situ.

Dahlia 'Procyon'

Behind it in the border is Fuchsia 'Mrs Popple'.  I've written about this one in a previous post but it's now in full flower and dripping with it's relatively large scarlet and orange flowers.

Fuchsia 'Mrs Popple'

In the little pool garden Hedychium 'Stephen' is just beginning to open the lowest few flowers on the first of the eight spikes produced by the clump this year.  The copious rain this year (including today!) has helped to bring these to flowering a week or so earlier than normal.  They'll be in full bloom in  a week or so but this gives me the opportunity to show the delicate beauty of the individual flowers, rather than the massed assemblage of the flower spike.  They won't last long - the end of August will see them over - but they are so attractive in both foliage and flower that I'd always make space for them wherever I gardened.  Now, if only my other four hedychiums will be as obliging...

Hedychium 'Stephen' - individual flowers

Up the cherry tree Passiflora caerulea is busily wending its annual way.  It was late in flower this year, a direct result of our cold summer, but at least it survived and is now showing flowers both close to the ground and 15ft / 5 metres up in the branches of the tree.  It's very attractive to bumble bees as well.

Passiflora caerulea

I grow four hydrangeas in the garden but the star of the show at the moment is Hydrangea aspera var sargentiana.  Big, dark green, velvety leaves are a perfect complement to the heads of purple florets, each surrounded by a pure white set of sterile florets designed to attract insects.  It's a fabulous plant, though it does have two problems.  Firstly, the flower heads go over quite quickly and loose their attraction.  Secondly, it can make quite a tall, gawky shrub - with too many of the flower heads in the upper canopy.  For the shot below I mounted the camera and wide angle lens on my monopod and shot downwards from the 10ft / 3 metre level.  Fine for a photo, not so fine for normal viewing.  I feel a heavy pruning coming on.

Hydrangea aspera var sargentiana

 

Just to the south of the Hydrangea, in the little pond that gives title to the garden area I call the pool garden, Nymphea 'Escarboule' lays its flat carpets of circular lily pads and pops up the occassional flower.  I love the intricacy of water lilies - even if it is too big for the confines of its home.

Nymphea 'Escarboule'

I added a shot of Abutilon 'Patrick Synge' last month but since then I've added a few more shots to my collection and the one below is one of my favourites.  It really shows the dangling bells of this lax shrub.

Abutilon 'Patrick Synge'

In a shadier part of the garden Acanthus mollis has flowered.  It doesn't do it every year - too shady - but I grow it for the foliage rather than the flowers.  Even so I'm not averse to enjoying the tall spikes and their rather spiny white flowers when they do develop.

Acanthus mollis

Not far away from this is Roscoea x beesiana, a little white flowered ginger which produces successive orchid like flowers over a six week period.  Relatively new to the garden, it will take a while to produce a clump as large as the R.purpurea in the front garden, but it's a welcome addition to a shady corner nonetheless.

Roscoea x beesiana

I've had to rescue Beesia calthifolia from the open ground.  My gastropods were destroying it at an unsustainable rate so pot growing was the only option.  A shame.  It's a pretty little woodlander, with nicely mottled, glossy leaves.  But at least it's given me a better chance to appreciate the tiny white flowers that are carried all summer long.

Beesia calthifolia

In the front garden Phygelius 'Yellow Trumpet' is producing its second flush of the year.  I have to be careful with this one.  Unlike other Phygelius, 'Yellow Trumpet' is a much larger, stronger shrub and is inclined to sucker.  Not uncontrollably - but it does need watching.  I usually get three good flushes - in late May / early June; August and early October, with intermittent flowering in between to provide interest throughout the warmer months.

Phygelius 'Yellow Trumpet'

I bought Epimedium franchettii 'Brimstone Butterfly' last year as part of my restocking programme after previous winter losses.  For last September's Blooms Day I illustrated it with the shot below and commented that this was the first epimedium I'd grown that flowered in summer as well as spring.  I put it down to settling in to the  garden during its first year.  Well, it's repeated the habit and has continued to produce flower stems through the summer.

Epimedium franchettii 'Brimstone Butterfly'

Though not, alas, against the colourful background of its spring foliage.  The red hues don't persist.

Epimedium franchettii 'Brimstone Butterfly' - spring foliage and flowers

There are quite a lot of other plants in bloom at the moment but most I either illustrated last month or will still be in flower in September so I'll leave them till then.  In the meantime I hope you've enjoyed browsing through what's flowering on a cold, windy and wet August 15th here in Plymouth.

We once were lost but now are found

One of the joys of renovating a rather overgrown, winter damaged garden is finding plants that you thought you'd lost.  It may be a seedling from the original, it may be a small plant hidden away under the growth of neglect, it may be delayed regeneration from a fragment of root, tuber or rhizome.  I've previously mentioned Euphorbia mellifera, Freesia laxa and Tritelia laxiflora but over the last year as I've slowly cut back and brought the garden back to life I've found others.

Star of the foundlings has to be Hedychium gardnerianum.  I lost a large pot of this to the extreme winter of 2009-2010 but had a rhizome tucked away where I was trying to establish a colony in one of the borders.  I thought I'd lost that as well until, in late summer last year, a small shoot popped up with the unmistakable glaucous sheen of this gorgeous ginger lily.  It will probably take another year or so to re-establish and flower again even though it is now pot grown and cossetted but at least it survived when so many other plants didn't.  And, assuming I keep it healthy, I've again got these fabulously scented flowers to look forward to:

Hedychium gardnerianum

I used to grow quite a few hardy geraniums before my interests turned to more exotic plantings.  A few still grow in the garden but one I thought I had lost as the front garden became more shaded was the sun loving Geranium renardii.  To be honest, I wasn't too bothered.  My tastes had moved on, I thought.  3 bad winters in a row have forced me to be more conservative so I was delighted to find a seedling of this pretty geranium when I was renovating a border in the front garden.  It's well away from the site of the parent - a tribute to the explosive seed pods - and in the wrong place so I've moved it to a sunnier spot in the hopes that it will once again produce an early summer display like the one I photographed in 2005:

Geranium renardii

When I moved into the garden in 1996 there was little here apart from 6 big bushes of Fuchsia 'Mrs Popple', one of the largest flowered 'hardy' forms.  (Stem hardy down here in Plymouth, root hardy in most parts of the UK.)  Six became three, then two and finally down to one as I cleared them to make room for other plants and plantings.  I kept one in the rear garden for its long season of flowering but removed the rest, roots and all.  So, I thought.  Two winters ago I lost my one remaining plant to old age and cold.  It hasn't regenerated - and I hadn't kept any youngsters.  But, coincidentally, one of the plants I removed five years ago has regenerated.  It was in my warmest border and must somehow have survived unseen amidst a host of tender shrubs and perennials until winter wiped them out and allowed it back into the light.  Welcome back.  Though I'll probably propagate it and move it again. Another mild winter and it will get too big for its position - and I need that space for more tender plants.

Fuchsia 'Mrs Popple' alongside Euryops pectinatus in 2006

Bridal wreath, Francoa sonchifolia, isn't the hardiest plant in the world so I was fairly confident in thinking three harsh winters had finished it off.  I was wrong.  There was no sign of it last year but it's popped up again this year, probably from a deeply buried bit of root.  I admire its persistence but, once again, I've had to move it to a less shady site.  Sun, not the increasing amounts of shade in its original spot, is what it needs to produce its airy spikes of white and pink flowers.

Francoa sonchifolia

My final plant is is one I thought had dwindled away, not liking my rather damp acid loam, preferring drier, sandier soils.  Libertia perigrinans is a pretty, grassy leaved plant with a golden centre stripe running through the centre of the upright foliage.  It's also a runner, roving about mildly by virtue of thin rhizomes.  What I thought was dwindling was actually relocation.  The plant had moved itself to the centre of my clump of Iris sibirica 'Perry's Blue' and was hidden amongst the taller foliage of the Iris.  Dividing the Iris clump last summer revealed the Libertia.

Libertia perigrinans

The moral of the story?  Even in a small garden plants can appear to be lost - but isn't it lovely when they come back to life