Through the Garden Gate --July 2024

The garden has  looked lovely throughout July. I usually find it starts to look less colourful in July  once the earlier flowers have gone over, but not this year, perhaps all the rain we've been having is helping to keep it looking good.

Looking back on last year's post for July I remember that I bought some summer flowering plants to fill gaps in the borders and give some colour through to late summer. Unfortunately , they don't seem to have come back to flower again. This year I thought I would try growing dahlias, which never did well in my previous garden. They started to flower a week or two ago, and I am quite pleased with them. 

The garden smells lovely too especially on the patio area. Honeysuckle, Buddleia, the rose on the archway and a pot of lilies are all competing with one another. At the moment I think the lilies are winning.

I've read that people are saying there aren't many bees or butterflies about this year. I've seen plenty of bees in the garden, they especially like the catmint and the Veronica and now that the Buddleia is flowering it is full of bees and hover flies. There are a few butterflies starting to appear they like the Buddleia too.

I haven't done much gardening recently apart from some deadheading and cutting back. It's good to have a break from big garden jobs in the summer to just relax and enjoy the garden.

I'm still cutting plenty of flowers for the house. There are plenty on the allotment especially sweet peas which are doing really well this year. The hydrangea in the front garden is getting too big now it's full of blooms so I've been cutting them too.

Our daughter Sarah and family came to stay last weekend. We had a few dog walks with their beagle dog, Snoopy. He liked exploring the garden and disappeared a few times round the back of the flower beds. Holly the cat wasn't happy about us having a dog to stay and kept out of the way for much of the weekend.

This last week has been very warm and sunny and we hoped that summer had finally arrived  but I don't think it's going to last. We are having a holiday in Wales soon so we'll be packing clothes for all types of weather. 

I hope you are all enjoying your gardens, and making the most of the fine weather.

I am linking this blog post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post.

Through the Garden Gate--July 2023

July has been a very wet month. After a spell of very hot, dry weather in June we went to constant rain, which the gardens needed. But the rain has hardly stopped and I now feel it's overstayed its welcome. We have done a lot of dodging showers to try to get our garden and allotment jobs done. There doesn't seem to be any sign of fine weather yet. 

The borders always look a bit dull at this time of year when most of the flowers have died down. I've been out when the weather allowed cutting back the earlier flowering plants, deadheading and tidying up the beds. We get a lot of mare's tail weed in the garden and I've spent quite a bit of time pulling this up. Once I'd done all those jobs there were quite a few gaps in the borders so I thought I would  buy a few summer perennials to fill up. These all went in the big raised bed which gets a lot of sun.

I bought a lovely Rudbeckia called 'Sunbeckia Sarah'. I had to get it when I spotted the name as one of my daughters is called Sarah! 

The bed looks much more colourful now with the Rudbeckia, a Gaura, Verbena, Echinacea, Penstemon I also have a big pot of pink lilies which are in flower now and I just plonked it in the bed still in the pot rather than planting it. It was a bit heavy though and Richard had to help me. It took a few moves around the bed before I was satisfied which was the right place for it, so I wasn't very popular when I kept changing my mind. It has a very strong perfume which we can smell even in the front garden. 

The Hydrangea in the front garden is full of pink blooms which I have been cutting for the house. I haven't had to buy any flowers for weeks now, the garden has provided me with plenty of flowers for cutting. Even just a few little stems can brighten up the house.

At the beginning of July we had a few days away in North Wales. We stayed in Betwsy Coed which was not far from Bodnant Garden. You can read all about our visit to Bodnant on my blog here.

We seem to be always complaining about the weather, we still want rain of course to keep the plants happy, but as we move in to August I'm hoping we will get fewer rainy days and some more sunshine so we can sit and enjoy our garden more. 

I am linking this blogpost to Sarah's blog at 'Down By The  Sea ' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post.

Through the Garden Gate -- July 2022

Where did July go? It seemed to fly by and I am late with this blog post. 

The weather has been very dry for ages and I seem to have been spending a lot of time watering. Obviously the tubs need regular watering, but normally I rarely water the flower beds. There have been a lot of plants which were wilting in the heat and I have been worried I might lose them. So extra watering has been done. We had a few days of extreme heat when it was too hot to do any gardening or even to just sit outside. The hot weather just drains me of energy and doesn't agree with my arthritis, so I spent a lot of time indoors resting. Our front garden is quite shady and we don't spend a lot of time there, but when it was really hot we were really glad to be able to sit out there in the shade.

It's that time of year when I find the main jobs in the garden are just deadheading and cutting back. But sometimes it can look a bit bedraggled as flowers go over and I wait for the late summer ones to come into bloom. There are a lot of gaps, where flowers have gone over and the soil has been so dry it has not been the right conditions for planting any new ones to fill the gaps. The astilbes which like a moist soil have been struggling and are now looking brown and shrivelled up, even though they are in the damp border. I'm wondering if they will come back next year.

You don't always need flowers to provide colour, this Hakonechloa grass is a lovely and bright, there are clumps of it around the garden.

This bright pink phlox flowers from July onwards, but its got  battered by the rain this year.

I love this white Lysimachia, but it does tend to flop over onto the grass. I've put a few extra plant supports in this year

Geranium Rosanne is a very reliable plant and keeps going throughout the summer.

I don't know the name of this rose--it's either 'Rachel' or 'Pride and Prejudice', I got the labels mixed up. I do like it though.

So the flower beds are not looking great. It's cooler now and thankfully we have had rain. Proper rain which has soaked the ground and refreshed everything. Perhaps the garden will start to look better now.

I am linking this blogpost with Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post.

Through the Garden Gate--July 2021

July seems to have whizzed by so quickly and when I checked my garden jobs list for July there seems to have been very little done.  I think though that this month is when you should sit back and enjoy the garden and we gardeners don't always do enough of that, we're always spotting jobs which need doing. Well we have had the weather to be able to sit and enjoy the garden. It has been very warm and sunny for most of the month and at times just too hot to work in. Finding a spot of shade to sit in isn't easy in our garden and I keep wondering about planting another tree in an appropriate place.

I always find that there's a bit of a lull in the flower borders towards the end of July as the earlier flowers have gone over and we wait for the late summer colour to appear. When it wasn't too hot I just pottered around deadheading and cutting back to tidy the borders.

The buddleia is now in flower--a lovely rich, deep purple called 'Royal Red'. In the front garden the hydrangea flowers are opening up, starting blue and gradually turning pink. 

Also in the front a clump of Rudbekias have come into flower.  These were sown last year as annuals and got left in the ground over winter.  They are a lovely bronze colour. 

The hot weather has caused a bit of stress to some of the patio pots. As I have such a lot of pots, the watering has sometimes got neglected. Looking at them I can see that the geraniums cope better with dry weather, so next year I might grow more of them.

One project we managed to get done was the wildlife pond, which is made out of an old galvanised bath. After much discussion and a few disagreements about where to put it, we finally found a good place in the woodland/stumpery bed. We sunk it into the ground and  arranged some stones around the outside. I put some gravel and a few pebbles in the base of the pond and some bigger stones which will provide shelter and easy access in and out of the pond for any wildlife. Then a trip to the garden centre for some pond plants was needed.  As its only a small pond I didn't want to overcrowd it so I have put four plants in, choosing carefully that they were slow growing plants which wouldn't get too big. One plant which I would like but haven't been able to find locally is a dwarf water lily. Two weeks later we were really pleased to see a frog in the water. 

Last September we had our 50th wedding anniversary, we didn't want a big fuss and because of all the COVID restrictions we couldn't do much anyway. Our daughter bought us a pot of pink lilies. I didn't know if they would grow back again this year, but they have. The smell is wonderful as you come through the gate into garden. 

Now at the end of July the weather is cooler and we had some storms a few days ago. The rain and wind has really battered the garden and those patio pots are in a really bad state.  I will have to do some more cutting back and deadheading We really needed all that rain though, especially at the allotment. Perhaps my patio tubs will perk up now.

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post.

Through the Garden Gate--July 2020

July was quite rainy and cooler—not summer weather at all, we are longing for some better weather. I thought there didn’t seem to be much change in the garden from last month, but when I looked back at last month’s blog photos, I realised that of course the garden does look different. The borders are full and colourful.  The mid to late summer colours are appearing now

bright yellow and orange crocosmia

more orange from the heleniums

 Can you spot Holly the cat under the grass below the heleniums? She's lying next to the cat mint getting very drowsy.

deep magenta pink phlox.

purple buddleia

My gardening jobs for the last few weeks have been just deadheading and cutting back.  It’s been very relaxing to just potter about in this way. It’s that time of year when you can relax and enjoy the garden, just a pity that we haven’t had the good weather to sit out more.

 The sweet peas are only just starting to flower.  They are what were left over from the allotment, I put some to scramble through the climbers on the archway and others to grow up an obelisk in a grasses bed. Although there aren’t many yet to cut, there are more each time I cut them.

I planted a few sunflowers in pots, these are a dwarf type called 'Choco sun', I'm looking forward to seeing them in flower, they look nice and bushy.

 With not as much work to do in the garden we have started to go out more to places which we feel have good safety measures in place now that COVID restrictions are being eased.

We went to RHS Harlow Carr, see my blog about it here https://margaretspatch.blogspot.com/2020/07/getting-out-and-about-at-last.html  and last week we visited an National Garden Scheme garden near Skipton in the village of Carleton-in-Craven.  The house and garden were called The Grange. It was a big garden to walk around with some wonderful herbaceous borders.

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at http://downbytheseadorset.blogspot.com/2020/07/through-garden-gate-july-2020.html 

Through the garden gate--July 2019

The weather has been beautiful this month, but too hot to do very much gardening. I have pottered about a lot, snipping off dead flower heads and cutting a few things back. But the garden hasn't needed much attention thank goodness and I have taken time to just sit and admire it all.  With having a fairly new garden  I still can't remember all the plants which are in there. So sometimes I have a lovely surprise as a plant comes into flower which I forgot I  planted earlier in the year.

    

The garden has been a riot of colour for a few weeks now.  The bottom border which collects all the water when it rains heavily seemed to suddenly burst into flower with pink astilbes and yellow lysimachias and a lovely pink campanula.  I don't normally put pink and yellow together but it looked wonderful and we were able to see it all from the house.

 This is geranium 'Rosanne' and it is full of bees.  It was in the back of the raised bed last summer and got a bit lost amongst all the other flowers, so I moved it to the front of another bed this year.  It has been flowering for several weeks now and I think it will carry on until the autumn

In the last week there has been a lot of heavy rain and the flowers have take quite a battering, both in the borders and in the patio containers, so I need to get out and do more deadheading.

The sweet peas are now flowering and provide me plenty of cut flowers for the house. I had to cut some of the lavender back last week as it was falling over the path, causing a bit of a trip hazard.  They looked lovely in vases around the house.

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post.