Crocosmia | Davids Garden Diary

Crocosmia are in full bloom now and bring a real zing to the garden. Here backed up by the dark Physocarpus ‘Diablo’ and behind a clump of Iris sibirica for support.

I love garden Phlox and have quite a few now, but they do shout ‘old fashioned’ and ‘out of date’ for the modern garden. Mine don’t last very long in flower either so it is a brief joy but I won’t be getting any more!

The Rudbeckia laciniata are huge this year, well over 2 metres, and the flowerheads themselves also appear to be larger. They seem to respond to weather conditions and vary from year to year in height and cone size.

Cheap and cheerful Liatris spicata love the rich soil in the rose garden and bring in the bees and other pollinators. One of the most underrated summer flowering bulbs in my opinion. Always ramrod straight, open from the top downwards so always look good and will grow almost anywhere in sun.

This is my ‘prairie’ border where I grow tall Leucanthemums, Helianthus and Verbena bonariensis as well as Silphium perfoliatum and a few others to create a focal point and vista from the kitchen window. It takes the border through August and most of September before I need to do anything with it.

Lysimachia ciliata ‘Firecracker’ is an odd plant. the yellow flowers don’t seem to belong to the dark foliage. It is rather persistent and can be invasive if not constrained but I like it all the same. It pops up here and there and if I don’t like where it has wandered to, I just pull it up. It doesn’t sell well at plant sales!

Have a great weekend

David

It is all too easy when writing a blog like this to talk about how good things are and to only put up your best pictures of flowers and foliage on sunny days and in good light. But we all know gardens are not always like that! So, just for a change, I thought I would post some images of my garden on this miserable wet mid-October day.

In reality, at this time of year I am surrounded by a scene of death and decay.

Last weekend a friend introduced me to the concept of plants that ‘die well’. I don’t know who originally coined this phrase but it is very apt. Some plants do seem to die better than others. This Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ dies badly in my book and smothers everything else in the process.

The leaves of this Amelanchier lamarckii. on the other hand, die back well with interesting colours and a gradual decline before dropping in November. My alkaline clay is not well suited to it but a generous annual mulch of leaf mould seems to be doing the trick.

Echinaceas die well because they continue to stand tall and straight and maintain their cones filled with seeds which the finches love.

Of course, there are a few bright spots as well. The Verbena bonariensis collapsing into the waiting arms of Bidens aurea makes a lovely chance combination

And despite the atrocious weather today, my Granddad’s Chrysanthemum which I have named ‘George Simons’ after him, still looks fabulous.

Some foliage always looks better adorned with raindrops and Cotinus coggygria is one.

The impossibly named Aster ‘Andenken an Alma Potschke’ is definitely not dying but it doesn’t like the rain. If it wasn’t held up by all around it the metre high stems would be horizontal now.