Flowers in our garden

[alison]

Here are just a few of the flowers in the garden at the moment. Spring is such a wonderful time for the colours that come. Early spring brings mainly whites and yellows and late spring starts with purples and reds. Hope you like them.

That was a London Pride. I always thought they were just pink so it was a great surprize to see such different colours inside its petals.




I love the cornflower. It looks like a thistle when it first gets it bud and I just love the openness of the petals and all the colours inside.

[Anyanka]

Alison, what kind of plant is a 'London Pride'? I like it! I want one!

Your geraniums have opened some fabulous deep blue, almost purple blossoms now. Thank you, again!

[alison]

I told you they were a lovely colour I will get sonny to take a photo of the whole plant of London Pride. It is very fragile looking. It starts off with lovely rosette style leaves on the ground and then thin long stems grow up with the flowers branching off them. They look like little pink flowers all very dainty.
If you decide you like them I will send you some.

[alison]

Here are a few pics of the London Pride. Some are close-up to see the flowers and others are so you can see them in situ. These are taken from just above the waterfall to the pond and mixed in with the hostas, green alakanet, wild buttercups, Iris and other plants. I have some london pride at the other side of the garden where it looks really lovely as it is next to a lovely red broom and a deep burgandy peony so the contrast of the light pink next to the dark reds is really pretty. Anyway here they are. Let me know if you want any. You can't see the rosette leaves very well in the pics as the buttercup leaves are more prominent, but you may get a glimpse of them if you look hard enough.

[Anyanka]

Beautiful - funny how misleading the closeup was, though; I'd assumed the flowers were much bigger. Thanks for showing the whole plant. I'd still love one, but didn't mean to sound as if I was demanding one from you - I just meant 'I want to get myself one', hence the request for a species!

Have just googled to find out more - here's a link to the ever excellent Wikipedia for London Pride http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Pride_(flower)

I'll see if they have this at our garden centre, as Saxifrages are usually quite cheap to buy, but if I can't find one... You'd have to let me trade you something though. Rose cuttings? I have lovely lovely scented shrub roses.

[alison]

Anyanka, just thought I would show you a photo taken from the street of all the purple geraniums in flower. I will also try to get one taken full on, rather than at this angle to show you what the front of the house and garden look like together. Sonny took this so it is bound to be better than my attempt but here goes.

[Anyanka]

Wow! That gives me an idea... we have a tiny delapidated wall at the front, which really needs to be knocked down and replaced. Perhaps I should plant up the entire length with geraniums; they are well behaved enough to not attack passers by, after all. I'd been trying to come up with ideas for a hedging plant; geranium hadn't occurred to me!

You won't be surprised to hear that I've already had requests for bits of the purple geranium, too!

[alison]

Once it has finished flowering, I cut it all back down to ground level and within a week or so it has started to make another mound which grows about half to three quarters the original height so it makes a nice covering of greenery for the rest of the year right into late autumn. I then do a final cut down to ground level when I think it has really had it and leave it to die off for the winter.
When I planted it up there I never thought it would look so good and every year people comment on the garden as they go past. The honey bees love it as well

[alison]

Here is the picture of the front garden taken full on. The honeybees all really love the purple flowers. It is such a shame that it doesn't last long enough. It is just so lovely in 'real life' it can be seen for ages up and down the street and has such lovely colour.

[alison]

Here is a lovely closeup that Sonny took yesterday.