Light of the Cosmos

As Summer draws nearer to its close we are blessed with colour.  It illuminates the garden and the lower level of the sun accentuates every shade.

The stars of the show now are Cosmos.  We purchased many varieties from Sarah Raven and have grown them on all Summer.  Now their flower heads shine above their froth of green foliage.

I am pleased with our choices to.  They include a collection of different varieties from white, through pink to dark plum as well as Cosmos bipinnatus 'Dazzler' and the white 'Purity'.  I also love Cosmos sonata 'White' and Cosmos 'Antiquity' but most of all I like the way they have interspersed with Verbena Bonariensis with the colour shades working well together.

And they provide height too giving every border where they are planted a fullness and voluptuousness.

So we are in a good place for the time of year with the garden looking as beautiful as it can.  We also have a few much needed rain showers helping to freshen everything up a little after a prolonged hot and dry spell.

But next year we will certainly add Cosmos to our shopping list - lovely, quite lovely.

Making the cut

It's a time for taking cuttings, collecting seed and enjoying the vibrant late Summer colour of the garden.  Pots line the nursery area full of cuttings. I have also started the process of cutting back the Angustifolia varieties in the Lavender bed as their flowering is now spent. But for the intermedia varieties of Lavender, their season is later and the display still vivid.

We have also collected and sown seeds from Foxgloves which we will grow on for next year.  It's a busy time as many plants are over and need cutting back with the beds clearing.

But what gives me real pleasure are the displays of Echinaceas and in particular purpurea 'magnus'.  This was the grand plan at the beginning of the year, to add more cone flowers to the garden and 'magnus' was key to the plan.  The insects love them and the garden is a hum of bees and a flutter of butterflies.

I also love the softer glow of the light at this time of year.  It illuminates the late Summer planting quite beautifully and brings out the purples and oranges like no other time of the year.  It is immensely forgiving with none of the harshness of the light of early Spring.

But the year rolls on and Autumn approaches.  So, best to make the most of things and enjoy them while we can.

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.

Ebb and flow

The garden is changing, shifting shape and form.  Late Spring has ebbed away and only the bobbing heads of Alliums, all green now, reminds us of the contrasting purples and whites of a few weeks ago.

Summer is flowing through the veins of the garden and as we pass the Solstice, a new road on this garden's journey has begun.  There are hints of hotter colours to come alongside the white, pink and purple of Foxgloves which stand tall and statuesque above the beds and borders like the spires of country churches in a landscape.

Sisyrinchium striatum stabs its way out of the borders while Papaver orientale 'Patty's Plum' lays across them like scrunched up purple gift wrappings.

These are high times to be remembered and stored.  Taking pictures of the garden helps and will see us through next Winter bringing back fond memories of all too fleeting moments.

This Sunday (30 June) is our last public opening of the year in support of the National Garden Scheme.  It will be an opportunity to share the garden at a precise moment in time.  But for us and the garden, the road goes on and around the next corner is the Lavender displays.  These tall and fresh green flower shoots will soon be many shades of blue, purple, white and pink.  Many Lavenders are in pots dotted around the garden so these too will add to the theme.  But as we past this Solstice moment, I cannot help but look back with a small degree of sadness at an array of plants that we will now not see again until next year.

Layer Cake

The garden has rippling colours of raspberry, white, purple and cream running through it like a layer cake and I want to take a bite out of it as it looks so lovely!

Alliums Purple Sensation, the tall white Mount Everest and low Nigrum, Foxgloves in purple and cream, the Oriental Poppy 'Patty's Plum' interplay and mix to create a wonderful, textured painting.

This is the high point of the garden in late Spring and early Summer.  The green so fresh, the colours so soothing, the overall effect quite beautiful.

For many of the plants, this is still only their second season as most were planted in Spring of 2012.  But all have taken well, matured and flourished. 

To wander around the garden at different times of the day sees the colour palette change and shift.  In the evening in particular the colours intensify and become more vivid.  In the morning, the garden is fresh and dew laden.

But already we can feel the footsteps of high Summer approaching.  A month away from the solstice, a gradual shift will now take place and the garden will transition with the purples and white being replaced with hotter and more vivid colours such as orange, lime yellow, deep red and the blue/purple/lilac shades of Lavender.

For now at least we must enjoy the moment and eat our fill of the visual delights.

On a sunny day in May

Yesterday was our very first opening of the garden here at Ordnance House.  The weather was fine, the sun shone and the garden basked in the warmth of a lovely day.  We were lucky that the weather gods were smiling down upon us.

To everyone who came to see the garden and to those that gave up their time to help, Vanessa and I are very thankful and appreciative.  The National Garden Scheme and the support they provide to so many good causes has also benefitted and this can only be for the good . 

We do hope you liked the garden which I have written so much about these past months.  It is in fact 20 months since work first began here and plants were placed in the ground with great hope and much anticipation.  I realise that this is still a young garden but I think it has good bones as they say.  I am sure it will improve with age.

Sadly, the only Allium to make an appearance was our old friend and favourite 'Purple Sensation'.  But only just.  The Allium display is probably around a week or so away which is about as late as can be and quite unheard of.

We will open again on Sunday, 30 June from 11am to 5pm when I hope we will be as lucky with the weather as we were yesterday.  Hopefully the garden will have even more flower and colour to enjoy.  But for now, we can only look back and be thankful for how lucky we were to have benefitted from such wonderful weather and lovely visitors.