Mid-June Blooms in My Flower Garden
Every day, there's something new to admire in the garden. My flower garden continues to produce so many colorful and beautiful blooms.
This perennial cutting garden has developed well over the seasons. I enjoy comparing its progress from year to year, and seeing where I need to add more plants to improve its display. Right now, gorgeous poppies are blooming everywhere - those colorful tissue paper-like flowers that look stunning both in the garden and in the vase. And there are also lots of Canterbury Bells, biennial bell-shaped blooms that come in shades of blue, pink, purple, or white. Plus, the larkspur, the alliums, the hardy Lady's Mantle, and of course, my climbing roses.
Enjoy these photos.
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- With so many different flowers in one large garden, I am able to spot new blooms coming up every day.
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- Some of them have longer bloom times and look great for weeks. Lady’s mantle, Alchemilla vulgaris, grows along both sides of the path of my cutting garden. It is a clumping perennial which typically forms a mound of long-stalked, circular, scallop-edge light green leaves, with tiny, star-shaped, chartreuse flowers.
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- The columbine flowers still look charming. Aquilegia is an easy-to-grow perennial that blooms in a variety of colors during spring.
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- And some of the peonies are also still showing off.
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- I start my foxglove from seed right in my greenhouse. Foxglove, Digitalis purpurea, add vertical interest to any garden. The flowers are on tall spikes and are tubular and bell-shaped, typically pink-purple with spotted interiors.
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- I grow so many alliums here at the farm and they continue to bloom so beautifully interspersed with other blooms. These easy-to-grow bulbs come in a broad palette of colors, heights, bloom times, and flower forms. They make excellent cut flowers for fresh or dried bouquets. What’s more, alliums are relatively resistant to deer, voles, chipmunks, and rabbits.
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- But this week it’s all about the poppies. Poppies produce open flowers that come in many colors from crimson red to purple, lavender, and pale pink. Poppies require very little care, whether they are sown from seed or planted when young – they just need full sun and well-drained soil.
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- This one is crisp yet delicate white with a reddish center.
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- Papaver grows mainly in the northern hemisphere, including within the Arctic Circle, with one species found in southern Africa.
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- Poppies are attractive, easy-to-grow herbaceous annual, biennial or short-lived perennial plants.
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- The plants typically grow to about two feet in height forming colorful flowers during spring and into summer with one bloom per stem.
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- Flowers have four to six petals, many stamens forming a conspicuous whorl in the center of the flower and an ovary of two to many fused carpels.
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- One tip – only water once per week during weeks that receive less than two inches of natural rainfall. And don’t splash any water on the foliage; moist leaves are more susceptible to pests and diseases.
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- Also looking so pretty – my Canterbury bells, Campanula. These are biennial flowering plants that grow to approximately two feet in height.
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- The plants produce large, bell-shaped blooms that are sweetly scented and attract bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.
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- Canterbury Bells bloom from late spring to early summer.
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- These flowers come in white, dark purple, lavender, blue, and pink.
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- The soft, light lavender is one of its traditional shades.
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- Larkspur, also known as delphinium, is a tall, colorful flowering plant prized for its spire-like blooms and variety of colors. Larkspur flowers come in shades of blue, mauve, pink, white, red, and yellow, and can be single or double-flowered.
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- The roses are looking spectacular this year. I have a vast collection – many of which are heirlooms that I moved from Lily Pond, my former home in East Hampton, to Bedford, and they’re still thriving.
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- Roses come in many different colors, such as pink, peach, white, red, magenta, yellow, copper, vermilion, purple, and apricot. They also come in many forms. I’ll share more photos of my beautiful roses soon.
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- June is such an exciting time in my garden. This time of year, the days are long, the sun is warm, and the soil is in perfect condition – all creating an ideal environment for flowers to burst and bloom wonderfully.
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