The Pleasures of June (1)

My garden is at its best in June. At the beginning of the month, it looked like this  - still predominantly shades of green, but lush compared with the two photos that began my previous post.

From this angle, only the dark purple flowers of Aquilegia 'Black Barlow' stand out against the leafy backdrop, but in the top centre it is just possible to make out a mound of Geum rivale 'Leonard's Variety' with its sprays of small, brick-red  flowers on dark, wiry stems.

I've become quite fond of these little plants and am gradually acquiring more. They make a neat clump of ruffled green leaves with the flowers springing up overhead like little parasols. More recent introductions look outward rather than down. My current favourite is Geum 'Cosmopolitan', a pretty, ruffled bi-colour.

 I was curious to see how a new-to-me geranium, a hybrid of G. renardii called 'Terre Franche' (or by some suppliers 'Terre France') differed from its parent. The flowers are darker, a saturated purple with beet-red veins.

A canopy of leaves hides Arisaema triphyllum's strange flowers. I keep it in a pot so that I can raise it high enough to see the blooms without getting down on my knees. It's inclined to spread beyond its allotted space, which is another reason to keep it confined.

 Clematis 'Miss Bateman', always reliable, had produced scores of fat buds that opened in mid-May and continued generously into early June.

A couple of very different plants, both with soft grey foliage, also bloomed early in the month. Rosa glauca is now a giant in the front garden and will have to be selectively pruned after flowering to prevent it from elbowing its way into its neighbours. First, though, I'll enjoy the combination of that foliage with its starry little pink-and-white flowers. It is impervious to the diseases that affect more modern roses, and will shine again with bright red rosehips come fall.

In a corner of the back garden, tiny Oxalis adenophylla 'Ilone Hecker' is creating a similar combination way down at ground level, where it is tucked among tufts of black mondo grass. I'm hoping it will bulk up but it doesn't seem to have any of the spreading tendencies of many of its relatives; quite the contrary.

Last but not least, to my delight, a Roscoea humeana that sulked for two years has finally deigned to produce a couple of flowers, revealing that it is the variant pale yellow form, 'Lutea'. The bloom-time was brief, but at least I now know it is settling in and I can hope for a better display in future years.