July in the garden

The garden has looked lovely and colourful this month, in fact it's probably looked its best ever. We haven't had very good weather but on the days when it has been good, I've taken time to sit and enjoy.  Last Autumn we made some of the borders bigger and earlier this year I  rearranged the plants in those borders thinking more about colour.  So one border has a pink, purple and blue scheme and another is mainly yellows and oranges with some blue, which is a good contrast and looks great. We call it the yellow border although it does have other colours, but pink is not allowed there. In some of the other borders there is quite a bit of white from the marguerite daisies and a lovely white lychnis which I divided this year and planted around the garden.

The white looks lovely at night as it starts to go dark

I'm loving the blue of the veronicas and their pointed fluffy flower heads.

 One plant which had been lost at the back of the pink border before we extended it is the tradescantia.  I dug it up, divided and replanted it in a group in the middle of the border where it can now be seen, and it looks great. The astilbes have been good this month, I have white, dark red and pink ones and they smell lovely too.

The crocosmia lucifer is now in flower and looks very striking in the yellow border with its tall arching stems.

The recent rain has caused some of the plants to flop and look messy.  Even though I love the cottage garden style of planting, when it's wet outside there's nothing worse than trying to avoid getting drenched by wet plants overflowing onto the paths. So I shall have a good cut back of some of these plants in an effort  to tidy up.  I have been doing a lot of deadheading and cutting back as plants go over and I'm trying to keep the garden tidy looking as we shall be off on holiday soon.  Hopefully then the garden will not look too overgrown when we return.