Tuesday 21 August 2012

An August Morning Garden



Despite grey skies, the light was good this morning so I walked around the garden, catching colours and late summer flowers with my camera. The roses have been so damaged by rain this year, but a few blooms are surviving beautifully in these warmer, late August days. The iceberg rose, above, looks lovely amid the blues of perovskia and agapanthus. There are self-sown teasels and evening primroses in this border.

Two agapanthus blooms against dark foliage.



Honey bees were finding nectar in rock rose flowers.



Across a corner of the little wild grassland "hay meadow". In the back of the border on the left is a tortured willow that I grew from a cutting and a Davidia tree showing green between the purples of  berberis and  cotinus ( smoke bush).



The young Indian Bean Tree is growing well now. We planted it about ten years ago. I love the way that its bright, yellow green leaves catch the light against the darker trees behind it.



We usually have a heavy harvest of ornamental crab apples, which feed the birds for weeks and give enough fruit for crab apple jelly. This year the fruit is scarce. Elderberries are also being eaten by the birds as soon as they ripen.



In a patch of yellows and purples,  tansy and potentilla flower against a hebe and a half hidden clump of scented phlox.



The yellow stars and fluffy seed heads of Clematis mackenzii  scramble up the fence beneath a tall Scots Pine.


6 comments:

Lucy Corrander Now in Halifax! said...

I'm having an internet problem so not all the pictures have come up - but, what I see, is beautiful. I'll have to come back for the rest later.

Bovey Belle said...

Your garden is so pretty, with good well-thought-out plantings. (I am a bung-it gardener, which sums up my cooking too!!!) Is the Clematis mackenzie the one I know as C. tangutica? Sorry you have a failure in the crab apple crop, but I hope there are plenty in the Forest to pick.

The Weaver of Grass said...

Not a single rose seems to have survived Nature's onslaught here DW.
My huge rambler, Alexander Giraulx, has had hundreds of blooms but as they come out ,so it rains and in the end every bloom looks like wet kleenex.

BilboWaggins said...

Your hay meadow area is lovely and I do like the shape of the Indian Bean Tree.

Blackbirds have already started on Rowan berries here.

Anonymous said...

Such glorious colours! Love the Teasels. I have so many Evening Primroses this year - they have self-seeded all over the place.

Down by the sea said...

Lovely photographs from your garden. I love your hay meadow and the colour of the Indian Bean tree. It's always great to plant a tree and watch it grow over many years.
Sarah x