My goal for the patio this year was as many colours as possible. It proved to me that a riot of colour doesn’t overwhelm my taste, though I do admit that the pink dianthus and the red diascia in one pot perhaps took it a bit too far. Here are a few things I’ve particularly enjoyed:
Viola ‘Columbine’–a very well-behaved viola I found in the alpine section of the garden centre. It is delicately fragranced, blooms for ages, is apparently fully hardy, and so far hasn’t put out that ugly invasive growth common to some other violas.
This is a very wet black peppermint. In the warm weather it exploded into beautiful growth. I hope I can convince it to make it through the winter.
This is Lewisia ‘Little Plum’, and I was surprised at how much a liked this flowering succulent. It helps to tidy it as flowers go over to help it look its best.
This little aquilegia has been languishing in a pot for 3 seasons now, usually succumbing to mildew before it gets to doing much. This year, however, it finally flowered! It gave me two, which I adored, and after I dead-headed the plant it gave me two more miniature ones <3<3
Geum ‘Cooky’ is a lovely little plant, which flowers in the happiest shade of orange.
This is not a fantastic picture, but this year I’m training sweet peas up the wall next to the back door. So far they’re taller than I am and I’ve got colours from peach to pinks to deep purples. They smell lovely, of course, but you really do have to stay on top of dead-heading. I brought a nice looking sprig in yesterday and popped it in a vase, but evidently it had been pollinated because it immediately went to work casting off its petals and shooting out its pods. lol
Papaver ‘Garden Gnome’ is a fantastic little plant for containers, and produces lots of flowers over a long period in cheery colours.
I’m still waiting for my perennial lobelia to send up its flower stalks. I also have a belated rose season, as I managed to mangle the roots of a rose I brought home to replace the one that got trashed over the winter. I cut back all its lovely buds a month of two ago along with a lot of its foliage in the hope that it would recover. A couple weeks ago it put out lots of new growth and since I’ve been assiduous in flicking off the hungry aphids, I’m hoping to see flower buds soon. It’s a David Austin ‘Lady of Shallot’, and should be gorgeous if I’m so luckyas to see it in bloom:
