Flowers in August

[Galina Isolating and Pollinating Find all posts View Profile Close Galina]

Our garden is a mixture of flowers and edibles and often both at the same time. There is always something nice to look at. All around the growing areas are flowering bushes, roses or flowers. Often they intertwine with veg. Just a few photos of the 'pretties' in August.

[Galina Isolating and Pollinating Find all posts View Profile Close Galina]

Can't remember the name of the first one, but it comes back every year from little bulbs. Dogroses and their hips and breadseed poppies are scattered around the plot.

[Silverleaf]

That's crocosmia, I think.

[Galina]

Yes it is, thank you.

[Silverleaf]

It's one of the few flowers I can remember the name of.

[Galina Isolating and Pollinating Find all posts View Profile Close Galina]

There is honeysuckle on the pergola which takes over when the clematis fades. Aren't the berries pretty? And lavender right next to the potato patch.

[Galina Isolating and Pollinating Find all posts View Profile Close Galina]

Very pretty potato flowers (if only I could grow just a single berry), I think this is Palest Pink Eye, Japanese Anemone and Borage with lovely blue flowers that taste good in salads and Pimms.

[jayb]

Forgot to add, the three potatoes I sent you will all produce berries, keeping my fingers crossed for you.

[Galina]

Thank you Jayb. At the moment I have one wilted flower that hasn't just dropped off like all the others. Wouldn't it be nice if that developed into a berry

[jayb Enjoying the scenery. Find all posts View Profile Close jayb]

Beautiful flowers, thank you
Some of my favourites, your garden must be a riot of colour. I've been planning on doing more here for a few years, but never seem to manage it!

[Silverleaf Weeding between the plants. Find all posts View Profile Close Silverleaf]

Me too! I want a bed of beautiful (but edible) flowers but I never quite get round to it. Next year, maybe!

[Galina Isolating and Pollinating Find all posts View Profile Close Galina]

It's all down to the wonderful Geoff Hamilton, as the series 'The ornamental kitchen garden' aired around the time we moved here and for the first time had a big garden. Curved paths to break up the very long and thin garden and flowers intermingling with veg. It was all very new then, now the concept of mixing flowers and veg rather than having a flower garden and banishing the veg out of sight, is well established. Not having a single straight line can be a problem, but it lends itself well to growing in patches, rather than straight rows. My garden paths (apart from the fixed 3 semicircular main paths) are very ad hoc - a job lot of cheap patio slabs that get plonked wherever needed in a different place every year. As they are red, they also add a bit of colour.

The flowers in the borders are permanent features and were planned to go around the edges of the plot right from the start. I even bought a packet of dog rose seeds in our first year! The hollyhocks were a present and different colours appear every year. They are short lived perennials and come up by themselves. They get weeded rather than planted. The poppies are the same. A friend from the South of England gave us seeds once and we have had them ever since and plenty of poppy seed for dinner rolls too. The first blue aquilegia and an asparagus plant just arrived and so did the feverfew. Borage was from the seed circle. The flowering bushes were partly from cuttings sneaked into my pocket on the way to school. Some of the bushes were treasured pocket money mother's day presents bought by the children in Woolworths. I swapped Babington Leek for Japanese Anemone. How some of them arrived I cannot remember, like the Crocosmia and the Red Hot Pokers, maybe bought on an open gardens event?

It is all a bit wild and jumbled together. There is definitely no planting scheme or colour coding. But there is always something in flower apart from in deepest winter.