Our garden is smelling rather nice at the moment. There’s a few flowering shrubs in bloom at the moment…

At the top of our steep drive the ceanothus is in full flower, it’s full of bees and the honey scent is lovely as you stand by the back door. My OH keeps telling me it needs cutting back, which it does, but not until after it’s finished flowering!

In the back garden we ‘borrow’ scent from the back lane, we back onto a disused railway line which is great for dog walking, not so good for weeds, the tall green plants to the left of the path in the sunshine are mainly nettles, they’re taller than me! The other photo is the area directly behind our garden…mmm it’s a weedery!

However when you turn the other way there is a HUGE Philadelphus, or Mock Orange Blossom, the scent drifts over and fills our garden, which is lovely. We do have a couple of philadelphus shrubs in the garden, but they never flower as profusely as the one on the back lane!

I’ve been having a battle with weeds this week, I’m trying to clear the front garden as much as possible before putting membrane down so I’ve been spraying mares tail and bindweed, so we’ll just have to see how effective it is, mares tail is notoriously difficult to kill!

I learnt something new this week, hope I’m not the only one not to have realised this! I love peonies, I think the flowers are stunning, but I never really thought of them as scented flowers. I fell for a bunch of gorgeous white peonies on the market, as soon as he passed me the bunch I noticed the perfume, but when I got home and put them in a vase in the dining room, the scent filled the room like lillies! I haven’t had chance to check the perfume of the peonies in the garden yet!

Another shrub in flower at the moment is a sambuscus nigra black lace, it makes a lovely backdrop by the arbour. I usually prune it hard in the spring as I grow it mainly for the foliage, and it does get a bit big if it’s just left, but this year I never got round to it, so I’m enjoying the flowers!

It’s the longest day of the year here, hopefully summer has realised it’s meant to be making an appearance!