We Have FLOWERS!!!
Jul. 10th, 2011 05:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
endlessraritiesA lot can happen in the space of a week.
I featured a garden post last Sunday, and reported that progress was satisfactory, but that things still hadn't quite kicked off yet.
While the bedding plants haven't quite started flowering ( the cosmos, snapdragons and anagallis are still quite slow) the herbaceous plants have really come along by leaps and bounds. The combination of roses and potentilla in the front garden is setting the lobelia and osteospermum off a treat:-
When I first designed this bed, I put in a range of potentillas (pale lemon, yellow/orange, pink and red) and planted the spaces in between with Old English Roses of a similar colour, interspersed with lavender to try and keep the aphids away. The red potentilla expired first of all, followed by 'Eyelyn', a lovely salmon/apricot David Austin rose, and then all but one of the lavenders bit the dust. But the basic premise remains the same, and I think it works. Any spaces in between the roses just get jammed full of bedding plants, with cosmos to the rear, snapdragons and osteospermum in the middle rank, and lobelia at the front. When J added primula and viola, things went a bit awry, but his additions have also continued to flower and I think the end result complemented the existing scheme even more:-
I featured a garden post last Sunday, and reported that progress was satisfactory, but that things still hadn't quite kicked off yet.
While the bedding plants haven't quite started flowering ( the cosmos, snapdragons and anagallis are still quite slow) the herbaceous plants have really come along by leaps and bounds. The combination of roses and potentilla in the front garden is setting the lobelia and osteospermum off a treat:-
When I first designed this bed, I put in a range of potentillas (pale lemon, yellow/orange, pink and red) and planted the spaces in between with Old English Roses of a similar colour, interspersed with lavender to try and keep the aphids away. The red potentilla expired first of all, followed by 'Eyelyn', a lovely salmon/apricot David Austin rose, and then all but one of the lavenders bit the dust. But the basic premise remains the same, and I think it works. Any spaces in between the roses just get jammed full of bedding plants, with cosmos to the rear, snapdragons and osteospermum in the middle rank, and lobelia at the front. When J added primula and viola, things went a bit awry, but his additions have also continued to flower and I think the end result complemented the existing scheme even more:-
I'm quite fond of sweet peas, but instead of growing them in the normal formal way, I tend to let them ramble through the herbaceous border:-
This particular sweet pea looks great amongst the blue geranium and wine red scabious.
Lastly, I thought I'd do a special feature on begonias. Because I like them. The vine weevils like them too, unfortunately, But at least most of my begonias have reached an age where they can hold their own against a predator. They're blousy, they're frou-frou, they're totally in yer face, but I love them!!
Lastly, I thought I'd do a special feature on begonias. Because I like them. The vine weevils like them too, unfortunately, But at least most of my begonias have reached an age where they can hold their own against a predator. They're blousy, they're frou-frou, they're totally in yer face, but I love them!!
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Date: 2011-07-10 05:47 pm (UTC)For the first couple of years, we had a major problem with aphids, but just recently everything seems to have balanced out nicely and they just aren't a problem. We had a Little Brown bird patrolling one of the miniature roses in the back garden today - don't know if it was a willow warbler or a chiff-chaff, but it was certainly on aphid munching detail!
I got into begonias fairly late in life, but I really love them now!