The foxgloves are in full swing now. These useful biennials seed themselves around all over the garden. Those that are where you don’t want them to be can be pulled out easily (and make a nice clump of greenery to feed to the compost). I probably don’t ‘edit’ them as much as I should.
Here and there a white one pops up. Last year I tried to dead head the purple ones and allow the white to seed, because I prefer the white ones (particularly in the beds where I’m aiming for a white theme). Clearly, I wasn’t very successful.
You can, supposedly, tell what colour flower the seedlings will produce by looking at the stem colour (the purple ones have darker stems and veins) but this hasn’t worked for me. Perhaps I didn’t study them hard enough. The purple forms are pretty too though.
Sweet rocket (Hesperis matronalis) can self seed too. The year we grew them from seed they filled the borders, but they’ve diminished in the following years (too much ‘editing’?)
These campanulas were here before we arrived, and also seed around freely. I’m not complaining – there’s nothing like having beautiful plants for free!) Like the foxgloves, some of the seedlings turn out white. Most are in shades of lilac.
Keeping on the theme of self-seeders, we planted Phacelia as a green manure one year, and loved the flowers so much we couldn’t bear to dig the plants into the ground. They too come up year after year. The flowers are pretty, long-lived – even in a vase – and have a sweet smell like honey. And the bees absolutely love them.
On a more cultivated note, we were disappointed last year with how quickly the Allium hollandicum ‘Purple Sensation’ flowers were over. Allium Christophii, on the other hand, lasted much longer. So we bought some bulbs of those last autumn, planted them into pots (thank you Monty Don and Gardeners’ World for that tip) and popped them into the garden in spring.
Here are some more of the highlights at the moment…
The garden moves on at pace, and I feel a weight of responsibility to try and fully enjoy each new highlight as it happens, and before it’s over without me having even noticed!
text & photos © graham wright 2024