gardeninacity

Tomorrow is Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day, when bloggers around the world share pictures of the flowers in their gardens. In our garden things are a bit on the quiet side. The excitement of the spring blooms has passed, and the hot yellows and oranges of summer are yet to be. But there are still flowers to be seen, mostly of quieter white and blue.

In the front garden our shrub rose ‘Cassie’ is having an outstanding year. She is in fact just covered with blooms. In this case the blooms are small, white, semi-double and slightly fragrant. I’ve written about ‘Cassie’ before, but for now I’ll say again that this is a compact, trouble-free shrub rose that really delivers the goods.

On the other hand, in the Driveway Border my Wild Indigo (Baptisia australis) has flowered very sparsely this June, a big change from prior years. Maybe it needs a shovelful of compost.

Also in the Driveway Border, I am tentatively satisfied with the results of my experiment with California Poppies (Eschscholzia californica). If you remember, I direct sowed them back in March. They have germinated and covered the areas that would have otherwise been bare and have just started to bloom, so far rather sparsely. I hope that they gain enthusiasm as we head into the second half of June.

In the Sidewalk Border the ‘Husker Red’ Smooth Penstemon (Penstemon digitalis) is blooming in combination with several varieties of Salvia: ‘May Night’, ‘Blue Hill’, and ‘Caradonna’.

I planted the Salvias in an area along the sidewalk that had been full of Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum).

This year the Salvia is being smothered a bit by lusty Geraniums growing back from seed and bits of rhizome. I may have to dig up everything in the fall if I want to keep a drift of Salvia here.

Behind the sidewalk border things are quiet in the Island Bed, but the Giants of the garden – Cup Plant (Silphium perfoliatum) and Sweet Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium purpureum) – are preparing to make a statement.

In the meantime, there are the blue flowers of the Ohio Spiderwort (Tradescantia ohioensis). This Spiderwort does not run like its Virginia cousin (Tradescantia virginiana).

In the East Side Bed, the Geranium ‘Biokovo’ are past their peak but still blooming.

And the Solomon’s Seal (Polygonatum biflorum), now in their third year, have really come into their own.

In the back garden, probably the most exciting blooms belong to Clematis ‘Ice Blue’.

This is still a young plant (planted in the fall of 2013), but it has enormous blooms at least 6″ wide. It’s supposed to bloom over a long season. We’ll see.

What else? The Goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus) is flowering, though also flopping a bit. In this case I have restrained myself from staking it because I think it looks good this way.

Also there’s some European Jacob’s Ladder (Polemonium caeruleum), along with Yellow and White Corydalis (Corydalis lutea and C. ochroleuca).

I’ve left out some things, especially the containers which have mostly been switched from spring to summer annuals. We can cover those in future posts.

In the meantime, check out the June blooms in other gardeners’ posts at May Dreams Gardens.