It’s been damp and murky today, so it’s lucky I took advantage of the nice weather yesterday to take some photos! June is a lovely month in a typical English garden with lot of plants coming into flower. There’s roses, peonies, geraniums. geums, day lillies, irises…

I’ve got several peonies around the garden, the common deep majenta one and a white version too, I’ve also got a couple of more unusual ones which are still fairly young but managing a few blooms this year. I was really pleased to see the pink and white frothy one appear as I moved it over winter, they have a reputation of not liking being moved, but I think as long as you keep the soil depth the same, they seem to cope with it. The flowers are stunning for their few days of glory. I only realised last year (when I bought a bunch of peonies) that they also have a beautiful scent.

The big beautiful purple iris I showed you last week is just getting better! There’s three enormous blooms on each stem. At the other end of the scale I spotted some tiny purple irises mixed in with the yellow ones round the pond, they look really pretty and dainty, I’m not sure where they’ve come from as I certainly don’t remember planting them!

We have a bank of irises next to the patio, it started off several years ago as a clump from my mums, every so often I’ve split it and spread it out a bit. The soil is awful there so I’m amazed how happy they look. The flowers are beautiful, they have a fine silver line round each petal which makes them look really delicate. I was fascinated watching the bees on them yesterday. I presumed the bee would go down the centre, but they actually creep right under between the top petal and the three side ones.

It smells lovely when we walk up our drive at the moment. At the top the ceanothus is in full flower and buzzing with bees, it has a strong honey scent. Opposite is a lime philadelphus, it’s other name is Mexican Orange Blossom, it has a really heady scent. There’s a philadelphus on the back lane behind us, on an evening the garden is filled with the scent.

The climbing roses are both flowering at the moment, we have one called Generous Gardener on the arbour, and Teasing Georgia on the arch.

I’ve done a bit more clearing at the top, slow but steady progress! I dug up a huge patch of nettles which did make me feel better! I’m leaving the poppies up there to give them chance to self seed before I have to clear those too. This red one came out yesterday, I noticed that the petals were caught on the pod, so I released them and watched them slowly unfurl.

Hopefully over the next few weeks I’ll have a bit more time and energy to work in the garden as I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. In the meantime we are managing a few pleasant evenings sitting in the garden with a glass of wine 🙂