Humlegård in bloom

This week I got the loveliest of presents. I'm guessing only gardeners will understand how much I appreciate it, but my friend Malins mum Lillevi sent me a whole bin bag filled with flowers from her garden! There were burning love (Lychnis chalcedonica), wolfsbane (Aconitum napellus) and euphorbias, allium bulbs and tiger lilies (Lilium bulbiferum). I couldn't have been happier, and immediately planted them into my messy wild border by the chicken coop next to my house. The colour scheme here ranges from yellow to blue and pink, and I feel that adding a bit of random elements will work just fine. Finally the honeysuckle Lonicera Dropmore Scarlett seems to have started to grow and put on a good show of flowers. It should be semi vigorous, but in my cold climate garden all the climbers are quite slow to reach any hight at all.

On the other side of the road my woodland garden is coming along quite nicely. It has a low hedge along the road of Spirea japonica Little princess which is blooming delightfully at the moment. In both ends of the hedge I have planted red leaved birch trees, but these will take many years to grow up as presently they are just little red leaved whips. My lovely pink yarrow Achillea millefolium Pink grapefruit has also put on a wonderful show this summer.

I'm so in love with the Macedonian scabious (Knautia macedonia) that I let it freely grow and self seed anywhere it wants to. It makes amazing deep crimson flowerhead that float in billowy clouds in the border. When my children were little they called this kind of deep crimson colour "squazel" and clearly I have an affinity for the colour. Elsewhere in the border Aquilegia Songbird Cardinal glows in a more red-tinged but still slightly squazel hue next to Geranium himalayense “Plenum” and Caucasian pincushion flower (Scabiosa columbaria).

I keep sowing seeds for the wildlife and sometimes I actually succeed in getting some wildflowers or wildlife friendly flowers to move in and make my garden their home. I wish they would self seed much more, but we have to be happy for the small successes don't we? A small population of foxgloves have spread as well as Maiden pink (Dianthus deltoides) which is declining fast in the wild.

Last but not least the deep red leaved ninebark Physocarpus opulifolius 'Diabolo' has flowered satisfactorily. Now the weather has turned cold and rainy again, and with that I'm only enjoying the garden from indoors through the windows. I hope you have better weather where ever you are!