June GBBD in London

Did you see Gardeners’ World on BBC this week? Monty Don said it was only one word to describe the garden this month and that was ‘Lush’. I couldn’t agree more, although in my garden, lush seems a bit inadequate word these days, my garden is filling up and has already started to take on the jungle feel it gets in the late summer.

But let’s start in my front garden. Since last GBBD post the winter bedding has been thrown out and the summer bedding for my window boxes is now in and already starting to flower.

Here are 3 types of bedding dahlias, double calibrachoas and trailing begonias.

The fuchsias that flowered through the winter are still in flower, more than they have ever been.

Fuchsia 'Velvet Crush' is probably one of the best fuchsias I have ever had, and I love the fact that the flowers start out deep burgundy and ends up dark pink.

But back to the new flowers in the window baskets, this is Dahlia Happy Days Purple.

Dahlia Happy Days Pink.

And some of the Dahlia Happy Days Pink are very light.

Dahlia Happy Days Cream.

Calibrachoa Double Can Can Magenta.

Begonia SuperCascade Vanilla Cream.

Oh, and before we go out in the garden, let’s just make a short stop in my kitchen so you can see my new orchid, a Dendrobium, isn’t it gorgeous?!

Most of my orchids are Phalaenopsis', but I just fell for this one looking so different. It is a Dendrobium nobile and I don’t really know if I will be able to get repeat flowers on it growing here in my kitchen, time will tell!

OK, so now to my garden. The last few GBBD posts I have made have been so incredibly long – because I have so many plants in flower all the time all year round, so I have decided that at least for this month I will do it a bit different. I will only show you close-up photos of new plants I haven’t showed before. You can find close-ups of all the rest in previous GBBD posts if you want to see them more closely, but I will try to name as many as I can so you can look them up if you are interested in any of them. Instead of lots of close-ups I will do some more wider shots.

At my seating area the roses are in full flush, this is 'Scepter'd Isle' and 'Susan Williams-Ellis' although the latter is taking a short break right now before next wave of flowers. Do you see all the geraniums on the shelf?

They were my summer bedding plants in my front garden last summer. I pulled them up last December to plant the winter bedding, but didn’t have the heart to chuck them as they were still alive. I simply put each of them in a pot and placed them on my patio, and fully expected them to die at first sign of frost. But I never got any frost in my garden, so in April I pruned them down to half and here is the result, they are flowering like mad!

Turning around at my seating area, Dopey, the rhododendron is almost finished flowering, on this photo you can’t see the few flowers still left. Behind are lots of Fuchsia Annabelle, they get taller and taller every year, I don’t cut them down.

And this is the view from my sofa bench.

Moving down in the garden, here is the lovely Dregea sinensis on the arch, already growing so much that I have been able to start taking cuttings.

Moving past the arch, on the left side where the bird bath is, the new area with heucheras and white lilies in the background - none of them quite ready to flower just yet.

But move a bit further down the path and you are hit with an amazing scent from the white lilies, Lilium regale, which I think must be my absolute favourite scent in the garden, even though I have several lovely scented roses. Along this path I also have some of the new daylilies I have started to collect, they are growing in pots for now and I think I will keep some of them in pots as long as they are happy with that.

Two of the new daylilies are in flower already, this is ‘Bubbly’.

And this is ‘Pink Damask’.

This right side of the garden is completely empty in the winter, but look at it now! The dahlias have just started to flower, the red and orange Asiatic lilies have been flowering for weeks and between the leaves there is a new, blue clematis that hasn’t managed to put on enough growth to climb above the rest of the plants yet. Here are also foxgloves, which are new in my garden.

I have wanted foxgloves for years, not sure why I haven’t bought any before, but this year I did!

This is Digitalis 'Dalmatian Cream’.

And this is Digitalis 'Dalmatian Peach'.

When taking photos of them I got fascinated by how intricate they are inside. Have you ever looked inside a foxglove before? This is where the pollen comes out, the bumblebees gets it on their back when rubbing against it.

And look at these hairs at the entrance of the flowers. Wipe your feet before entering, Mr Bumblebee!

Down at the bottom of my garden there is an explosion of colour in amongst the green. Mrs Popple, the fuchsias against the fence is like a beacon and to the right of Mrs Popple, a pink hydrangea is almost ready to flower.

The big feature down here is the ‘passionflower tree’, the plant draped over a dead tree stump. You can’t even see that I cut off about 70% of the plant in April, it has all grown back by now. I dread to think what it will look like come October....!

This is the view from the bottom right corner of my garden.

And here is a closer look at that same corner, with the pink hydrangea and the big fuchsia basket to the right.

This part of the garden is getting so full now that I no longer dare to walk around in the flower beds like I used to do. It makes deadheading slightly tricky!

And here is the view from the other corner, at the end of the path.

Let’s go back up again.

Oh, just have to stop for a moment and sniff those lilies one more time, they are intoxicating!!

The squirrels have finally left my roses in peace, and although the shoots on the fence is way behind, at least I have roses coming from the middle of the bed. The red rose is ‘Crimson Cascade’. There are no yeallow roses right now, the rain last week took them all and none of the many buds managed to open in time for today.

Standing on the same point but looking towards the opposite side, here is another hydrangea, monster size! I cut it down 2 years ago, to just 2’ tall, but look how much it has grown since then. Amazing really, since I never give these anything apart from water if they need it, I never fertilise my hydrangeas.

And next to the hydrangea are some of my skyscraper lilies, or Giant Goliath Lilies. In America they call these orienpet lilies, just different names for the same thing. These here are in their third season and the tallest of these 4 is 2.25m tall. These are called 'Miss Feya'. I also have 'Friso' and 'Anastasia' skyscraper lilies in their first season. The hydrangea is 1.9m tall by the way!

Back on the patio now, here are all my sun loving plants, and perhaps you can see that I have two peonies left, that’s all, the rest has gone in the nice summer weather we have had lately. I had 51 flowers in total so a good bunch this year too. And on either side of the peonies are tall plants growing up, that’s sunflowers which probably will be much taller by the time we get to the autumn so more about them later on.

I have lots of pots of various size here, but I have managed to cut down the amount of pots a bit, by planting some out in the beds and also giving away and swapping some plants. Now is a good time to have less pots to water!

There is a couple of new additions here on the patio, I got a container of calla lilies, Zantedeschia aethiopica which hasn’t started to flower yet, not sure if they will this year, and I also have some non hardy Zantedeschias which will probably die down in the autumn. I feel that annuals like this are a bit of an extravagance....

....but when you look at them, who can resist something as exotic as this, even if they won’t last for years to come?

I sacrificed one of each colour and made a vase of them plus some lilies.

The calla lilies are stunningly beautiful.

They get to end the GBBD post for June for me. 

I am linking my post to Carol at May Dreams Garden, If you head over to her blog you can see many more gardens in flower around the world right now. Until next time, take care.