The Garden Gets Exciting

We've had such a good spring with alternating showers and warm sunshine, that many of my perennials are blooming ahead of schedule. In my last post, I mentioned the first flower on 'Rosa Mundi'. Now the bush is in full bloom, and I can't resist taking lots of photos. here are a couple of the best.

One more flower,















and one showing a bit more of the plant. Like many of the old roses, it casts its fragrance on the air, where it drifts through the garden and makes you look around for the source. However, if you stick your nose right into a bloom, it appears to have only a light perfume.





















Growing next to the rose is a German iris called 'Midnight Oil'. I'm not generally fond of this kind of iris, but couldn't resist this one with its silky black petals and lavender-blue beard.

 
 My favourite hardy geranium, Geranium x magnificum is thick with blooms that echo the colour of the iris beard.

 

Behind it in a shady corner, Gillenia trifoliata is mixing airy white flowers and lacy leaves with the dark foliage of Actaea 'Hillside Black Beauty'. The two have similar foliage and I like the intermingling of the green with the espresso-brown.

Another shade plant, a saxifrage with a flower much like the Gillenia does its own mingling of the same colours.

Phlomis russeliana is a sun-lover with a flower like a series of yellow shrimp cocktails on a skewer. It has big, felted leaves that give some shade to the roots of the Clematis recta behind it that is now a cascade of little white flowers.

When I bought a rusty old tripod in a junk store my idea was to use it as a birdbath, but the birds didn't seem interested. Now I've filled it with a collection of shells as well as water and hope that this provision of more perching places will make it more appealing. Or perhaps it will attract butterflies instead. Meanwhile, it pleases me more.