In June the red rose blooms ...

Pat Austin

and the pink ones and yellow ones, and orange ones.


May and June were beautiful months - plenty of sunshine but not too hot, not too cold - Goldilocks sort of weather. We have had some nice surprises, a lovely philadelphus, some rather pretty roses and of course, I've been shopping.

This year I am keeping my new roses in pots until I decide if they are going to tolerate it here. I bought a couple of Harlow Carr, Charlotte, Sceptered Isle, Abraham Darby and a lovely pink one that had lost its label. I was very glad to find one of our favourite roses, Compassion, growing nicely up the fence, and there is also a vigorous and very pretty rambler romping through the trees.

The pots of fuchsias and lobelia I planted up early in teh spring and now in full flower and the strawberries are over. Courgettes are an everyday addition to our table and the tomatoes and cucumber won't be long now.

I can tell from the front gardens near by that roses do well and I am very happy about that. I've also noted other wonderful things - a very nice deep purple hebe that I will beg a cutting from and pieris also seems to do well. 

For those of you interested in seaside gardening you can find me on Pinterest where I have a lovely board dedicated to those plants.click here to see it


John has spent the last few weeks laying a patio around the area where he plans to put his shed - once we took the old one down I really coveted the extra space but I suppose he deserves one corner for himself. I can grow things up it and put pots all around and it will become part of the garden. we are thinking of running a rose arbour from it, but that will be a job for another year. There are other priorities to see to first.


The magnolia tree is slowing putting out new leaves but I am not sure it will ever bloom. it is still half naked and I read somewhere that they don't like to be pruned, so it looks pretty odd, the top half bare and the bottom half sparse. we will give it a chance though, see how it goes. The arum lilies planted below it have been beautiful.
Sceptered Isle

The weather has been dry so until this week we've managed to mow weekly and it really benefited from a feed early in the season. as you can see from the photo below one side of the garden is shady and the other sunny so I have the chance of growing a range of plants for different sites. the shady side already has large daisies, loosestrife, fatsias, ferns, bamboo (that might have to go) and I have added some white astilbe that shows up very well and lightens the darkness  very nicely. Next year there will be tall white stately foxgloves too.


I could never grow sweet peas at Ael Y Bryn but here I have discovered they do rather well, after a shaky start. they are now taller than me and I am picking a bunch a day to keep the blooms coming.
I have forgotten what variety I bought but they are lovely.



compassion
Stipa gigantica

Next time I will show you the progress on the shed and continue the A - Z.

I am an author of historical fiction set at the Tudor court, a Tudor re-enactor and sewer of historical clothing. In my spare time I love to escape to my coastal garden or play with my vintage dolls houses.

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