Early Summer Flowers
Sometimes I forget to sit back and enjoy the show…My garden is an explosion of color in early summer and I have to remind myself to experience it once in awhile.
I have high expectations of my plants to perform a certain way and do their jobs… because like… I planned it that way, yeesh. ( Type ‘A’ gardener here, lol )
But sometimes things disappear and then reappear in different spots. Once in awhile something pops up I KNOW I didn’t plant and yet other times…. a favorite decides not to come back at all.
Oy vey, the humor of our earth mother!
Here’s a little tour of what is happening in between the bulbs dying back, the perennials beginning to flush out and the annuals starting to put on size….
I’m going with a bright purple and chartreuse theme this year with spots of pink later in the season. But the first showing of summer is these iris’s, who always look lovely towering high over the yellow leaf boxwood.
I’ve added Allium Giganteum to the garden this year and I CANNOT wait for these to bloom. As we speak, the blossoms are splitting out of their calyx and starting to flush in the amazing purple tones these beauties are known for.
So amazing…. I had to include two shots of my new little pretties…
Not to be upstaged, the tight buds of my peonies hover near by…. it appears that the timing will be perfect for these two showy perennials to take the stage together.
I get asked all the time at Milner Village Garden Centre, what to do about all the ants on peonies. What people don’t understand is that although ants can be an nuisance to humans, they are not so to many plants.
This symbiotic relationship between ant and plant actually helps free the peony from its sticky calyx. The ants harvest the sappy coating releasing the petals so that the peony can bloom.
talk about team work
In fact, if you see a plant crawling with ants… take a closer look and you will most likely find that it is also infested with aphids. Ants don’t eat aphids… they FARM them…literally pressing down on their abdomens to force them to excrete the honey dew that the aphids excrete from feeding off the sugars found in plants.
I just find this stuff fascinating…don’t you?
The biennial flowering Dianthus is back this year but not as strong as it was the last two…. I harvested the seeds and donated them to a local seed library at Kwantlen College and gave lot’s away to my friends and family…. it looks like I may need to borrow some back!
As you can see, the annual bed won’t be looking spectacular until later this summer, so it’s nice to enjoy the forms and textures of the early season ornamentals like the oat grasses that look amazing at this time of year…
The vegetable bed is filling in nicely and my new Patchwork Garden Method is paying off… almost too pretty to eat!
The sun behind the red stems of my beets looks amazing….
and my containers of gourds are starting to put on size.
The $50 greenhouse I built a couple of years ago is still hanging in there and my peppers and tomatoes are cozy in their protected warm home. I use grow bags then sit them inside of plastic recycled containers… this way on really hot days I can add little extra water to the bottom for the roots to get a drink while I’m away at work.
And the potato’s are growing big in their potato towers that are SO easy to make and save SO much space.
I still have my little vignettes set up everywhere…. this one is by the back porch…
This one is displayed in the front….
My planters on the back deck are looking good, especially since I cheated…find out how to create amazing planters in minutes here.
This fall my herb garden is going to need an overhaul…so much stuff starting to take over since I did a revamp on it three years ago.
Where does the thyme go?
So that’s a look at my early summer flowers…….as summer wears on, the whole garden will change again. I’ll do update’s each month so you can see how it seamlessly moves into each glorious phase throughout the season.
