June Fun

While not official, summer gardening has begun here at the Faire Garden. What we consider to be spring bloomers are finished, the azaleas are wearing coats of green, the peonies, iris and lilac blossoms are the stuff of memories, and the daffodils and tulips are barely remembered at all. Thank goodness for the photographs, lest we forget their beauty. Early summer is marked here by the astilbes. The firey stems and flowers of red a.x arendsii ‘Fanal’ are the first to open. The white a. ‘Deutschland’, which has been spread hither and yon, is just beginning to blossom. More astilbes are waiting in the wings for their turn at stardom. They will receive their moment in the sun when the time is right.
The asiatic lilies will lead the procession of trumpet shaped flowers, followed by the daylilies, hemerocallis. Planted two years ago are the now budded Chinese trumpet lilies, lilium ‘Regale’. These were brought to the garden inspired by the book “Merry Hall”, written by Beverley Nichols. In his garden of the titled name, his gardener, Oldfield ( wonderful name, that), had raised the Regales from seed, and many pages were devoted to the loving care they received, and the delight given by those flowers to all who knew him. We have added l. ‘Golden Splendor’, now in heavy bud as well. Shown above, an asiatic passalong from daughter Semi, name unknown, of course.
In situ, the lilies are growing on the hill behind the main house, a difficult spot with scant moisture and poor soil. Joined by the waving stipa tenuissima, self sown nigellas and evening primroses in bloom, the lilies add just the right color jolt to the scene.
Our lady of the bank, is she a goddess? She looks rather warlike. The native sedum acre was trying to obliterate the heuchera ‘Silver Scroll’ on this steep corner on the daylily hill next to the back deck. We have pulled the sedum back and away from the lady and her bells. Under the sedum, a bed of moss and the originally planted chamomile show a darker shade of green.
Early summer bloomers, the veronica group is concentrated in the newly designated yellow/white garden. And yes, I know that neither of these plants shown above, v. spicata ‘Royal Candles’ and v. spicata ‘Red Fox’ are either color. We do have v. spicata ‘Icicle’ a tall white, and v. ‘Sunny Border Blue’, umm, never mind. The now green background plant is a seed grown baptisia, the white flowered one. I actually thought the seeds were gathered from the blue flowered one, but the first flowering of the three year old plants showed all the flowers to be white. One of the reasons that this bed is the yellow/white bed, a lucky coincidence. The sedum ‘Mediovariegatum’, with its handsome variegated foliage does follow the theme.
Out front in the middle streetside bed are the large gaura lindheimeri ‘Whirling Butterflies’. These are the low care, ever blooming summer perennials every xeric garden should have. They do grow to be quite tall and wide, about four feet tall and wide, so give them plenty of room to benefit from their gladdening girth.
Another gaura, this one growing on the shed hillside, a dark leaf pink variety, g. ‘Crimson Butterflies’. This pink is more compact than g. ‘Whirling Butterflies’, but just as floriferous.

In the same bed as the pink gaura are the eryngiums. We have struggled to get the vision met of a sea of blue pinecones atop silvery stems in this area. There are now more than ten plants, with some promising seedlings showing now. Blackberry lilies, belamcanda, more of the stipa grass and nigellas are close neighbors to the sea hollies. To the right is the edge of St. John’s wort, hypericum androsaemum ‘Albury Purple’.

Down on the gravel path between the house and the wall, the containers are starting to fill in with their annuals. We are expecting a great show, now that we understand the thriller, filler and spiller method of planting we learned in the design workshop on containers sponsored by
Gardening Gone Wild.

The containers have never looked better and the temperatures of summer should be no problem for the heat loving plants we have chosen for them. No thirsty plants can be grown in these pots, for they are going to have to go without being watered for the next few days. Our vacation is about to begin and the preparations are being checked off the task list one by one. The blogdom will have to survive without new posts or comments from us until our return, we will have no internet.

This is where we are going, Edisto Beach, South Carolina. We have rented a house large enough for our entire clan to convene , thirteen of us in all. This will be our third year there. The first year, when we arrived after the seven hour drive, we ran to the beach and set up our shade tent, towels, drinks, toys, etc. How did we not notice the dark cloud on the horizon? A strong wind gusted up and blew our tent across the sand like a straw in the storm. We quickly gathered everything up and ran across the street to our rental house. Looking at the photos taken of our wonderful vacation beach, we saw this storm in the sky beyond our smiling faces, (that have been cropped out to protect the innocent). We completely missed it in our bliss at arriving.

Last year, the weather treated us better upon arrival. We will hope for more of the same this time around.

We haven’t forgotten the biggest event of all that will be happening after we return home, midsummernight’s eve. There will be postings leading up to the big night, and we are hoping to have that stone with a hole all the way through to peek at the fairy goings on. Maybe the camera can be positioned to peer through the opening into magic land.

~~~

Until then,

Frances

This material belongs to Faire Garden and may not be copied or used without permission.

This entry was posted in Musings. Bookmark the permalink.