november bloom day

I missed last month's bloom day over at May Dream's Gardens, so i thought i'd do a quick garden round up today.


Amazingly there has still been not a hint of a frost. This means lots of colour is still surviving in the flower beds, but the flowers look a little bedraggled and forlorn, as if they feel nostalgic for their younger, summery selves! Even the roses are budding, it's nutty but i'm enjoying the slightly crazed combination of falling leaves and budding summer flowers!

Day by day the leaves are falling, but there are still enough to make the heart sing a little.

Time for a little rake-ercise i believe!

July Bloom Day (FOR FRIDAY CUTTING COURSE GO TO PREVIOUS POST)

Another Bloom day has rolled around and since I have posted once today already, this is just a photo round up for mid July. Thanks to May Dreams Gardens for kindly hosting as usual!

Clematis Polish Spirit

allium sphaerocephalon

shasta daisy

Leucenthemum

Fennel flowers

Helenium Moerheim Beauty

Rosa Special Memories

Austin rose, Graham Thomas

down to the river

cosmos antiqity

achillea red velvet, knautia macedonica, verbena bonariensis

hare's tail grass with stocks

night scented stocks

June Bloom Day

Whatwhatwhat, already!

The afternoon has burst furiously out of its chocks and is hurtling towards the finishing tape. I still have a million things to do, so this month it is pictures of the things I am loving in the garden. There is quite a lot I am not loving too, but I won't share all that with you because, well, photos of weeds and dodgy edging and uncalled for amounts of fennel thrusting skyward uninvited doesn't make great blogreading.

So, lovely to me are:

poppies of all sorts, tall enough to look me in the eye, and looking especially pretty growing through white ammi majus or nigella,

The last of the white nigella flowers and the thousands of seedheads, green then striped with purple and maroon,

the purple and lime green combinations,

the arrival of the deamy scented roses, the scabious flowers in white and soft purple, the waving spears of the veronicas and the airey branching stems of knautia macedonica,

the sky blues of the cranesbills and anchusa (Royalist Lodden),

and the gorgeously perfumed rose, 'rambling rector' which despite sounding like a nasty digestive ailment, is infact the prettiest thing imaginable and a variety we grow along a fence, but in our garden it is still in bud, it is in flower on our neighbour's wall, wafting its scent over the courtyard,

There is so much more to share, but there is an eight year old at my side desperate for fielding practice in the garden, and really, what is the garden for more, to blog about or play in with my boy? No brainer is it? So I wave  you 'so long' for the afternoon, and leave you with a photo taken recently that seems to sum up the spirit of Wild Acre to me. (If only I could photoshop out the blue alarm box on the barn wall!) Laters alligators.

Thanks, as always, to Carol for hosting Garden bloggers' Bloom Day.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day for May

Here we are at Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day again, I'm not sure where the last month went!

The cutting garden in early may, just before the tulips went over

In a word the garden is parched. Three months with virtually no rain, and it is a struggle to keep plants alive let alone looking healthy. The grass is turning brown, and flowers are going to seed in record time with foliage lacking vibrancy - the over all impression is a lack of colour and a bleached pallor  at the exact time of year all should be looking verdant and lush. It is tough having a wildly atypical English spring, in my first season as a boutique flower grower/seller, but I will show you (and myself!), that there is still plenty to enjoy out there!

The last of the Allium hollandicum 'Purple Sensation' have been harvested for bouquets, but fifty or so remain, their green seed heads giving a final flourish  before I cut them down. The baton has been handed to the Alliums  christophii, metallic looking purple star-bursts which look great at every stage of opening, and look lovely on their own in jugs.

I am also intrigued by the tall statuesque form of Allium siculum (Nectaroscordum), more easily known as Mediterranean Bells.

It has a vaguely other-worldly look as the buds unfurl but I think it is rather wonderful. What do you think, freaky or fabulous?!

There are also a few white Alliums in bud, serried ranks of little white nibs about to explode into flower!

Alchemilla mollis, bless her frilliness, is beginning flower which is absolutely wonderful not only for the borders but also on the bouquet front, providing gorgeous lime green froth to set off the roses and peonies which are just arriving - oh joy!

You can see in these arrangements the colours that are flourishing in the garden - greens of the Lady's Mantle and applemint, whites of Astrantia 'Shaggy', and Nigella buds, pinks of Aquilegias and a tiny Allium I know not the name of, purple of Salvia 'East friesland' and the final Alliums hollandicum 'Purple Sensation'. The Peonies in the bouquet below belong to my friend's garden, a garden of real loveliness that I am allowed to raid! Mine our mainly still in bud.

The anemones are slowing right down, so each last bloom I am really savouring. The white ones are purity writ in flower form, no?

So, spring bulbs are making way for the summer flowers and it really feels like summer is around the corner. The hammock has been up for a couple of weeks now and in the raised kitchen beds, chives and mints of all sorts are romping away and little green motorways of green salad leaves promise platefuls all summer, and the strawberries are coming along nicely.

Last night we harvested some of the baby spring onions, and had them cut up in tiny pieces sprinkled with salty capers plus olive oil and lemon juice on still warm Jersey new potatoes. They went down a treat with the garlicky/lemony roast chicken and roasted asparagus. Yummm! It is a glorious time of year isn't it when the garden is in flower, there are cut flowers in the house and food from the garden on our plates? Someone reminded me of Monty Don's declaration that "When I die I want to go to May." I couldn't agree more!