The weather has been a mixed bag over June: some hot sunny days, some overcast muggy days, showers and wind, but on the whole not too bad.

The hebe has had a trim to keep it a neat shape and to dead-head the flowers.  The tree heath (Erica arborea ‘Estrella gold’ ) has had a good chop as it was shading out some other plants a bit too much.  The deutzia ‘Mont rose ‘ has finished flowering now and has had the old flowering stems chopped.  I will have to give the mock orange (Philadelphus) the same treatment as it has just finished flowering.  As we have had a reasonable amount of rain I can put down some more mulch to help retain some of that moisture.    A few of the hardy geraniums have had a chop (later than the Chelsea chop time up here in Scotland) as there is a lot of damage on their foliage caused by the geranium sawfly (Ametastegia carpini).  The tiny holes eaten all over their leaves look like lace work.  They don’t appear to damage the flowers though so I will just have to tolerate them.

The Brunnera ‘Jack Frost’ is not looking great and I might just ditch it.  The slugs have really gone for the ones in the stumpery and the only one that isn’t too bad has an upturned hanging basket over it to stop the pigeons getting at it.  I have had to move the new heucheras from the back area of the garden to the bed that gets a little more sun.  Again the slugs have really gone for them so I will need to give them a bit of protection until they get going.

I have been finding a lot of mushrooms in my latest batch of multi-purpose potting compost which can be very unsightly in amongst the  pot plants, even in the house plants that I topped up with it.  I don’t normally buy Westland multipurpose but my usual compost was unavailable.  It is horrid stuff with huge lumps of wood and other bits and bobs in it, including small stones and bits of plastic, and it doesn’t retain moisture well.  I will NOT be getting it again.  The mushrooms were easily removed so the pots don’t looks so bad but the mycelium will still be in the compost.

There are a few gaps in the borders just now so I am moving some of my potted plants from the patio into the borders to fill in some of these gaps.  These small terracotta pot filled with succulents can cope in this area but I have larger pots with ferns in the shadier areas.  I do have to remember and move them again before any bulbs come up in spring time.

I have removed a lot of the violets in the stumpery because, although they create good ground cover, they had loads of seed-heads about to pop, and they are competing with the ajuga (more ground cover), and covering over some of the self-seeded honesty.

Another good ground cover plant which is flowering away now, and the bees love it, is the Campanula garganica ‘Blue diamond Adrianic’ .  I should probably cut it back a bit once it has gone over.

There are loads of pollinators about and they are loving all the the flowers just now: agastache, campanula, cirsium, astilbe, achillea, roses, alchemilla, giant cowslips, geranium, foxgloves, catmint, lavender, heuchera, verbascum, ragged robin, astrantia, bisort, marigolds, cistus, honeysuckle, spiraea, and thalictrum.  I planted 3 yellow thalictrum from the same nursery at the same time only a few feet apart and one is growing way taller than the other two, and has more purple in the stems.  I love the fluffy, yellow clouds of flowers that  the thalictrum produce and loads of pollinators love them too. It is normally covered in them but not when I took this photo apparently!

The wet corner is looking good just now but the rodgersia has not flowered this year.  I think it is too shaded out by the huge royal fern.  The soil is clay and there is a down-pipe just above the rodgersia.  The fern and weigelia are covering the rodgersia.

The moss roses and ‘Munstead wood’ rose have finally begun to flower and are looking great, but I still can’t believe how many roses I have had, and continue to have, on ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ – it is such a good do-er.

I have in the past regretting planting certain plants and one of them was lily-of-the-valley.  They look and smell absolutely gorgeous but they spread like mad and invaded all of the back border and the raised bed. They got right into the roots of other plants so  I had to be ruthless and take the whole lot out.  I would like to keep just a pot of them in the conservaorty for their lovely scent.   In spring I planted out some Allium hair bulbs as I was curious about the flower heads.  They look like little aliens with tentacles but when I asked facebook how far apart I should plant them everyone said that they regret ever planting because they spread all over the place!  It certainly doesn’t say that on the RHS site but now I am wondering if I made the right choice, and don’t want to make the same mistake again, so I have just put them in pots so I have easy access to them to dead-head before they produce seeds.  That is the plan anyway.

And now the heat wave is over so back to normal for the time being – thank goodness as I don’t do well in the heat.  The heat makes me breathless but It helps my arthritis, however it wreaks havoc with dry eyes, nose and mouth, and my eyes are now sensitive to the light which means I have to wear amber tinted wrap around sun glasses in bright sunshine.  I already wear a large brimmed hat and sometimes even a nose protector!  What must I look like?  I get bitten by some beasties just underneath the brim of my hat and these bites are incredibly itchy to begin with and make little red blotches all across my forehead.  They are not midge bites -I can hear the zzzzzzz of the midges coming and their bites are raised.  So I wonder what July holds for the garden?

After a couple of lovely sunny days the garden is becoming lush.  The weeds have shot up along with everything else.  The wet weather has been good for some plants like the candelabra primulas, the roses and the rhododendron.  I tried moving three of the primulas over from the pond overflow area to the damp corner by the ramp.  Only one survived, two were completely destroyed by slugs.  A bit like the  Achillea millefolium ‘Lilac Beauty’ I have been trying to establish near the pond last year.  The slugs got one so I potted up the surviving two and put one pot in a different area of the garden and the other pot on the patio table. The one in the garden  only just survived overnight whilst the one on the table is still great.    The patio table is becoming a nursery for  sick plants.  I have now put the damaged one on the patio to see how it does there.

Some primula get ravaged by slugs but some are spared and I don’t know why.  The white primula snowflake don’t get much damage at all and they spread freely but my primula apple blossom gets some damage but doesn’t spread freely.  The primula denticulata, veris  and vulgaris just get the odd nibble,  vialii have disappeared.

Another area which has loved the rain is the raised garden.  We pruned the viburnum and  syringia last year (and a bit the previous year) so sacrificed some flowers this year but they are looking better.  I might take out the Zepharin drouhin rose entirely as it is always a bit hit and miss there.  The beautiful acer is now swamping the blue hardy geranium so I may have to find a new spot in the garden for the geranium.

Along the back wall the pink hardy geranium is looking good next to the dark leaves and pink flowers of the Sambucus nigra f. porphyrophylla ‘Eva’ .  The Generous gardener rose growing  over the arch has been teasing us for a few weeks with all the lovely buds but yet to open.

In the pond the number of tadpoles appears to be depleted.  I thought maybe the newts had eaten them all but some folk have said that they may just have found better hiding places since there are more predators about.  I still haven’t found a good flat headed flowering plant to go beside the pond – they all just get eaten by the Spanish slugs.  The little iris versicolour Gerald Derby that hasn’t flowered for a couple of years has just started to flower again – yeah!  I had been thinking of pulling it out.  It isn’t all that showy but it is pretty and dainty.

In the conservatory my lithops are splitting.  Sometime lithops split into two and sometimes into four.  Mine are splitting into four new leaves.

I took the very scary decision to chop my aeonium.  I didn’t want it to get too tall as the head is very large and also they look better when viewed from above.   I really hope it survives the chop and I potted up bits of the stalk too so you never know, I may get a few if I am lucky.

The furry Kalanchoe tomentosa ‘Dorothy Brown’ flowered this year but I kept waiting for the flowers to open up more before I took a photograph not realising that they didn’t open any wider so now I will have to wait till next year to get a photo of the furry flowers.

As I said in a previous post my Nepeta Junior walker drowned in the very wet autumn/winter/spring that we had so I ordered three new ones form Crocus.  They have never let me down before but this time they did.  They sent one lovely looking plant, one not so good, and one diabolical plant.  Who thought it was ok to package these and send them out? I complained and was offered either a refund or a replacement.  I asked for a replacement (big mistake).  The replacement plant didn’t have a single leaf.  To be fair – the rest of my order was ok (although they could have been in better condition).  I am now going to try and buy plants in person whenever  possible.  I do still have a few good nurseries mail order to buy from.

Let’s end on a good note:  the bees and other pollinators are loving the rhododendron. the deutzia, saxifrages, chives, honey lilies and all of the hardy geraniums and primulas.  Soon the Generous gardener will erupt in beautiful flowers.  The other roses have started to bloom and smell gorgeous (although we didn’t get round to pruning this late winter so they look a bit more straggly than usual.  The sun has just come out.

Thanks to my wonderful physio Nicholas, I have been able to get back into the garden again to catch up on a lot of jobs.  Harry has been helping me to dead-head and move a couple of things, but I have been able to do a lot more now, although I will have to be careful how I move the heavy pots on the patio.  I haven’t taken many photographs so quite a few plants have gone over like the hebe, syringia,  rhododendron, aqueilegias and weigela.  They had been absolutely covered in bees, but now the deutzia and philadelphus are in full bloom along with the geraniums, foxgloves, cirsiums, clematis, catmint, centaura, candelabra primroses, heucheras, Lady’s mantle,  and astrantias, which are great for the bees and other pollinators.  The astrantia again have been a mixed bag where the slugs/snails are concerned.  The white ones don’t even have a nibble whereas the dark red one (Astrantia major ‘Gill Richardson Group’) is almost entirely eaten.  I am going to dig it up, put it in a pot on the patio and hope it survives.

In a corner of the stumpery where it gets a bit more sun than the rest of that area I have planted a few different plants to see which one likes it there the best.  The erigeron was good there last year, the little red mossy saxifrage are ok, and the dark leaved geranium is now happier than it has been in the last couple of years. I am still undecided.  The rogue foxglove will either come out once it has flowered or I will transplant it.

The seedlings from the golf course trees get absolutely everywhere in the garden and you really have to weed them out when they are tiny.  I have to get right in amongst the plant to fish them out.  Once the roots get hold when they are in the middle of the plant they are much harder to remove.  The ferns especially are a nice moist spot for them to survive.

I am going to have to invest in some more plant supports for the bushy plants that hand over the edge of the path.  I love how they soften the edge but it often means that I have to roll over them with my wheelchair to get past.  I missed the boat again with the large Patty’s plum poppies and the keeled over in that very heavy rain we had just a day or so ago, and all the petals fell off.  The roses have just started blooming now so I should get some pics very soon.

I am disappointed with a couple of plants that I bought for the pond a couple of years ago.  The dwarf bulrushes died, and the variegated yellow flag Iris not only didn’t flower last year but it failed to flower this year too, and is not variegated.  It looks like it might be the tall yellow flag iris which will be too vigorous for our pond.  Grrrrr!

I do love sitting on the patio relaxing with a cuppa but I tend to just see all the things that I need to get on with.  U have hardly done anything in the front garden so it is a monument to weeds and the yellow irises are now past their best.  I had been rethinking the front garden and have not come up with any ideas yet.  I was going to take up a few more slabs but that was when I had a garden help and they were going to help keep the weeds under control.  I may just take up all the slabs and just have keep the border but add a couple of drought tolerant plants.  I just don’t know – something to think about while I sit on the patio in the sunshine.