Summer flowers

 A selection of flowers. The echinops and verbascums have been good..

Cheerleaders

With all the recent cheer it's fitting that my border has reached its pom pom phase. I'm particularly pleased with my orange buddleia that was a twig from a local alley that was shoved in the ground to root. My white Echinops are just flowering too.

Sunshine = flowers

 Just a few days warm sunshine and hey presto colour. Note the patriotic red ,white and blue planting in the pots!









 Harebells. Thanks Matt.

Struggling for colour

 It's been so lacking in sun and continually wet that the garden lacks much colour. However, the verbascums are doing well and the alpine garden has been good despite the wet.
I have been waging war on the slugs and snails and have collected in excess of 500! I thought I was doing ok until I read an article that said in an average size garden there could be up to 20,000. They have devoured 8 boxes of bedding plants and most of my runner beans. Not to be defeated I am going to sow some more runner beans and raid the garden centre for some cheap plants to fill the wide open spaces!

Yellow July

After the longest day my garden has a tendency to turn yellow. Note verbascum is doing well despite the caterpillars best efforts.

Mullien caterpillar

These Mullien caterpillars couldn't be more different than their dull looking parents.

They're getting really stuck into my verbascums, but I'm going to leave them to it because they're so beautiful.

Echium success!

After years of trying I've finally had some success with my Echiums.

The Wildpretti (back lit plant above) was a cracking pink/red but was very short lived. The whole bloom lasted about 2 weeks.

This pink flower is lasting much better and the bees are going 'nanas for it.

Hopefully the white echium (bottom right) will get through the winter and flower next year.