Blooming

After last weekend's glorious sunshine, the much needed rain descended and now the flowers have really arrived. We've rolled over into summer at No.25 with the last of the late daffs deadheaded, the euphorbia fading and the forget-me-nots pulled out for another year.

This is our third summer here and the garden really looks like mine now (well my style at least, Woody's not much of a gardener beyond the allotment). I've lost just a couple of things to the freezing winter but on the whole I think it's done everything the world of good because it looks the best its ever done.

My garden is planted with things to remind me of people and places and gives me so much joy. This pretty little thing is a geum called Mrs Bradshaw and like so many of my plants orginates from my mum's wonderful garden. I remember this delightful plant from our childhood home and where my parents live now. Isn't she lovely.

Valerian is Cornwall to me, my favourite place apart from home. It's taken ages to really settle in my garden but finally it's sowing itself merrily around (especially in the little drystone wall which reminds me of how it looks along the lanes around Port Isaac). Over the summer it will grow into gorgeous spires of fluffy pink and carmine blooms and this year I've tracked down the white variety to fill the border even more.

Not that there's much room! I think you can tell I'm a cottagey, stuffed-to-the-brim, kind of a gardener. I've got such limited planting space (two raised borders, 6ft by 2.5ft - one shady, one full-sun) so I don't bother to plan and just buy/grow what I fancy and keep my fingers crossed. I'll need to do some dividing next year but for this summer I can just about fit everything in.

Persicaria Superbum loves it here (another from mum's) and I have Firetail in the shady border which does it's thing later in the summer. This fluffy pink variety has spread in a perfect fashion and doesn't seem to need any care or attention at all.

I need to plant more aliums too this autumn. Aren't they fabulous.

So the show is just beginning. Early summer brings lupins, nepeta Six Hills Giant (catmint), geranium Johnson's Blue, aquilega, lady's mantle and the beginning of the valerian. By mid summer the hollyhocks will be in full bloom along with irises, potentilla, verbascum, feverfew, knautia, cosmos, old-fashioned heavenly scented pinks and the climbing roses (James Galway & St Swithun's Day). After that the hot zingy colours take over with crocosima Lucifer, heleniums, rudbekia, dhalias and good old fashioned sunflowers.

For now everything in my garden is lovely (well if you ignore the untrimmed lawn, the nibbled hostas and the weeds that is).