I’m just recovering from two weekends of glorious Open Garden Days, NOT mine, I hasten to add but a very diverse and beautiful collection of gardens in my home town and Kimberley which is a short way up the valley. I love these days for the inspiration they provide and also for the camaraderie of fellow gardeners who can commiserate with the glut of whitefly we had this year or whatever else adversely afflicted our gardens. Gardening in our Rocky Mountain climate is not easy. It takes perseverance and an ability to brush off the many failures we experience some years. The soil here is really bedrock only recently beginning to break down since the Ice Age and never having been cultivated, except in valley bottoms. All new gardens and successes are to be celebrated.
With two family weddings this summer, I am trying to grow as many cut flowers as I can. I am hoping to have enough confidence to put together a few of the floral arrangements if not the bouquets also. Much depends on the weather through to the fall as one wedding is to be celebrated in October. The October wedding is favouring fall colours so I have a good few rows of sunset coloured Snapdragons. They were pinched out early on and are now beginning to send out some lovely flower stems. The ‘Potomac Orange‘ were the first to bloom and along with my Sweet William, Dianthus barbatus and some Lady’s Mantle, Alchemilla mollis as a filler, they made a bright arrangement for the gallery. The Snapdragons should continue to bloom through the fall so long as I keep picking.
I also had fun with the onset of plentiful blooms, putting together a few bouquets to give away. They contain a mix of the ‘Potomac Orange’ Snapdragons, Sweet William, Dianthus barbatus, Lady’s Mantle, Alchemilla mollis, Campanula, Yarrow, Achillea, Feverfew, Tanacetum, Sweet Cicely, Myrrhis odorata, Peony, Yellow Loosestrife, Lysimachia punctata, Sidalcia and a few Bachelor Buttons, Centaurea, cyanus
To see more early summer bouquets please head over to Cathy’s Rambling In The Garden where she hosts ‘In a Vase On Monday’.
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