Summer Begins - June

In our previous garden, June was always my favourite month.  Everything was lush and colourful.  Many of the plants in our new garden came with us, but not exclusively.  Over the last few months we have added to them.  There were very few plants in the garden on our arrival, which suited me because I'm not overly fond of other people's tastes.  The clematis on the other hand are another matter.  I love all clematis and although they needed a bit of TLC and know-how, this year they are looking spectacular, even if I do say so myself.

r. Tall Story Lovely and scented, but has a little blackspot appearing.  Will keep an eye on this.

I cannot have a garden without hardy geraniums.  I must have about 7 different varieties so far.  This one is shows up lovely against the chocolate heuchera in the front garden. 

The bees adore them too

Sambuccus Nigra just beginning to flower.  Our neighbour has a huge one of these in his front garden too, so I knew it would grow well. I plan to keep mine in check though by cutting it back hard each spring.

Solomon's Seal - this time of year in our old garden it would have been practically stripped of its leaves by sawfly.

White Astrantia

The 'red' hydrangea which flowered pink last autumn.  I mulched it with ericaceous compost this spring, so lets see what happens this autumn.

On pruning the Photinia in late spring, I came across a surprise.  A large Rhododendron!  I have asked our neighbour if he knows what colour it will be, but he wasn't aware of it either - to be fair though there were so many trees and shrubs squeezed into the front garden that it was easy to miss.  Cutting back the Photinia hard has opened the Rhody to the elements and it is already putting on masses of new growth.  I cannot wait to find out what happens next spring - it's like Christmas!

Baby pink hardy geranium

 The front garden is really beginning to mature now...

and will soon be awash with colour.

We picked up some cheap rattan effect tubs from Aldi recently.  The same tubs were 3 times the price in the garden centre!  We have filled them with bedding plants - one either side of the companion seats.  The Bumblebee added a tiny gnome.

Behind the seats is a huge jar from which a Nelly Moser clematis, an ivy and what appears to be a euonymus is growing.

The previous owners left behind an extremely heavy stone trough.  A good clean later, I added a gritty compost on a layer of grit and crocks.  These alpines should soon fill out.

The sunnier side.  Pinks, grasses, sedums

and eryngium

And a home for Ernie at last, with the wiegela growing behind him...can you spot him?

A bit of a gap where once the lilac azalea lived.  I decided that it wasn't interesting enough so out it came and in went a white Japanese Anemone.  Tiny now, but it will soon fill this gap.  

The Man That Can's pride and joy - in a few weeks this spiky fellow will be electric blue.

The alpina clematis of unknown name is fast outgrowing the trellis panel, so eyes and wires have gone in and they have soon taken up the idea.  Encouraging climbers to grow laterally will make them produce many more flowering shoots.  

I'm so glad I gave this bright green leaved Fuschia a second chance.  A good prune has rewarded us well with masses of red and purple ballet dancer flowers.

I think I have a new favourite plant - Astrantia.  I have 4 of these now, all bought very cheaply from the Botanical Gardens.

Dicentras are still flowering their socks off.  In our last garden these had gone over by now, but these are still in full flower with no signs of the plant dying back for the summer just yet!  I think I might move one of these down to the birch garden later in the year.

This corner of the garden has suffered somewhat.  It did have a little white hardy geranium, but my neighbour trampled it, and bashed the Japanese Anemone about a bit.  He is repositioning the fence.  The previous owners had a humongous conifer growing in this corner which uprooted and displaced the fence somewhat.  Now that it has been removed and the roots are dying, the fence is being fixed.  The tiny geranium didn't stand a chance, but the other small plants in the area were saved.  Once the fence has been finished, I plan on planting a Clematis Montana at the back and swapping the yellow flowered Hypericum (on the left) and the pink flowered Japanese Anemone around to give the Hypericum a larger space.

We've laid plastic covered mesh to the shed roof for the Clematis Montana to scramble across and then hopefully clamber through the conifer hedge at the side.  Our friends in NL have a beautiful one, and we have tried to get a very similar variety.

Pinks and Lavender with a backdrop of box hedging.

This stunning scented honeysuckle marks the gateway to the gravel garden, veg plot and Birch Bed.

All the plants in the Birch Bed are settling in nicely now, with only one fatality.  The bricks mark the badgers' exit hole.

One of the three r. New Dawn buds are beginning to swell and will soon be in flower - I'm very excited.

Despite there being a lovely blossom display on the apple tree in spring, there are very few apples on it.  I have read that some only have a proper crop every other year, or perhaps it just wasn't visited enough by the pollinators.   The Bumblebee's veg plot is doing nicely though - he has a strawberry plant in the top right, a rhubarb crown in the top left and a rosemary in the bottom left (the latter two gifts from our friends).

Either side of the sunroom doors is a hanging basket containing a near-black petunia and white lobelia.

And beneath the kitchen window are mangers full of lobelia, petunias, pelargoniums and bedding fuschias.

We have had to move our water butt and add another to make use of all that lovely free water that the good old British weather supplies so readily.    This end of the deck isn't really used, so makes sense to put them here out of the way.  We plan on screening them somehow though because they're not the most beautiful of garden necessities.

The ferns are loving their little corner of the garden by the top shed.

And a couple more mangers added to make good use of a plain shed front.  Not sure what to put in them yet though. 

We have so many plans rolling around both on paper and in our heads for various parts of the garden.  Looking back over the last 12 months, the garden is barely recognisable, despite still being such a young garden.  We have also been helping to design the outlaws' garden and our friends in NL so what out for Rose on a Ramble in the coming months!

Happy June!