After a very wet May we’ve so far had lovely weather in June, warm (even hot!) and sunny. The garden seems to change every time I go out.

I’ve been doing lots of weeding and planting today – I keep being tempted by the market plant stall or Courtyard Planters – I only went in for some secateurs and came out with six plants! The advantage of Courtyard Planers is that they will deliver locally so I don’t need to worry about getting plants home on the bus. If my OH comments I just say the flower fairies have been. Mind you, this time he was happy as one of the plants was for him, he’s taken over the front garden and is quite enthused at the moment, he mentioned he would like a brunnera and I saw one, not Jack Frost but very similar, so he was happy!

The early summer flowering clematis are all putting on a good show, they’re not very old, most were planted in the last couple of years so there’s not a huge amount of flowers but there’s some beautiful ones…

There’s another gorgeous purple clematis right next to the beautiful deep purple irises. I’m rather partial to irises, these came from Thornton Hall gardens, I think they’re a stunning colour. This is in my Amber & Amethyst garden, this bed is looking pretty good at the moment with perenial cornflower, aquilegia, geum and erysimum mingling in with the iris and clematis.

There’s some beautiful big blue irises in flower now just next to the conservatory, these are some my mum ordered for me from France one birthday, they’re obviously very happy there as the clump is growing bigger every year.

I’ve had a little rearrangement of my pots next to the patio too, the water feature with the fountain suddenly ran dry this afternoon, not sure why, even if the gentle breeze was blowing it out it shouldn’t have dried up that quickly, anyway I took the opportunity of it being slightly lighter to move it more to the front so hopefully it will get more sun and you never know the birds might actually use it as a bird bath!

I’ve done alot of weeding up by the pond too, buttercups and wild wild geum were everywhere, together with that sticky one that has like lots of tiny teasels. I was delighted to see a little frog (or it could have been a toad as I could only see his eyes and nose) cooling off amongst the duckweed. I was told recently that if you add some special black dye to the pond it doesn’t affect the wildlife at all but duckweed doesn’t like it, has anyone else heard of this? I’m hoping Mr Froggy is eating lots of slugs as my hostas are looking pretty good at the moment…

There’s another clematis on the big fence too, I think I forgot to prune this one so it’s all at the top. I started weeding this bed today but you can probably see a bit of what I’m up against – I’ve planted densely to try and deter the weeds (it doesn’t, it just gives them somewhere to hide!) so access isn’t easy, I’ll have to shimmy along the side of the summerhouse and under the cottinus as I can see a fair bit of bind weed appearing.

The flowers you can see include pink astrantia and a ruby red one, two big alliums at the front, a pieris and a geranium. I thinkthe peony will be in flower soon. Talking of peonies, has any one else noticed (here in the UK) that the peonies seem a lot taller this year, mine are all at least 4′ tall, I just hope the stems will support the heads when they open.

Looking at photos from this time last year, we’re at least a couple of weeks behind, but the garden is looking pretty colourful.