Small friends in sweet smelling places

The garden has a constant hum of bees of all kinds.

The flitting flight of butterflies too can be seen as they waft above the beds and borders.  The Lavender bed is host to so many bees and butterflies that I have lost count of them all.  There must be hundreds feasting on the nectar.

I take this as a sign of a healthy garden and overall the garden is thriving.  The heat of the past 3 weeks is easing and we have had some welcome rain which has added a freshness.

I still maintain that we are, in two years, where we were in five in our old garden.  The plants have thrived and grown at an astonishingly fast rate due to the massive amounts of light we get here along with a good air circulation and sharp draining soil.  Planting so close together has kept in the moisture at the base of the plants and the roots are kept cool too.  The Lavender, planted in the poor soil we inherited and have not improved in any way, loves it and clearly the bees and butterflies love the Lavender.

23 months on from when the planting began here, the garden now looks healthy, happy and pretty much mature bar the hedges which still have some maturing to do.  After so much hard work, hope and dreams, we now have a garden that feels like an established, proper, grown up garden and not one in the making.

Time, I think, to sit back with a cool drink and enjoy it along with our welcome guests of bees and butterflies.

Loose and lovely

The garden is unshackled, set free, gone loose and become wanton.  The relative formality of May and June is long past and the regiments and brigades of Allium heads dismissed or gone to seed.  The Foxgloves have also gone to seed which we will collect and propagate providing us with more plants for the garden.

Now the season has moved on and the stars of the show are roses.  Wedding Day crowns the arch from the vegetable garden into the orchard and looks romantically lovely.

But goodness it has been hot.  We have experienced temperatures of 30 degrees plus and the garden has basked in searing heat and light.  The Lavender has loved it of course and is now all out and providing a sea of blues and purples, whites and mauve.

Monardas abound and stand tall with their shaggy caps in reds (Gardenview Scarlet and Panorama Red Shades) and pinks (didyma Pink Supreme).  Soon will be the time for the cone flowers and I expectantly wait for the many Echincea purpurea Magnus we planted to show and display their finest.  Plate-like heads of Achilleas too are everywhere while Sedums are swelling daily.  Helenium Wyndley and Moerheim Beauty are also now appearing in clumps dotted around the beds too.

Summer is here, real heat has arrived.  Now is the time to store the moment in our memory bank or take pictures to look back on in the depths of Winter where we will warm ourselves with thoughts of long, hot Summer days.