The garden in June
Kari-Astri Davies is creating harmony in her borders and hoping for a picture-perfect garden
June can be a bit ‘twixt and tween’ in the garden, bridging the gap between the giddy whirl of May and the maturity of July. The weather may veer from downright dismal to heatwave. Our three newly-shorn pet sheep are happy though, released from their woolly blankets. It’s odd getting used to their lean look again.
Morning walk
By mid June, the long borders are showing the first significant flushes of colour. The morning walk takes longer as I contemplate work that needs to be done.
The border planting is a mix of perennials, annuals and shrubs, including roses. The south-facing white, blue and yellow border, with splashes of pink, continues to vex me. I’m trying to plant it to give a succession of harmonious colour from May to October, but have only partially succeeded to date. I’ve added a few, more upright, perennials, which echo plants in the opposite border. These include Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘White Eastfield’, with thin brushes of flower, opposite the fatter, deep-red ‘Dikke Floskes’ in the tawny bed, and Veronicastrum virginicum ‘Album’ opposite the purple-blue ‘Fascination’ in the rose bed. More repetitions of plants through the border have been added, including Campanula lactiflora ‘Border Blues’, with C. lactiflora ‘Alba’ at the other end. Lychnis coronaria ‘Alba’ is also new, providing airy, long-lasting flushes of single flowers on branched silvery stems. Often advertised as perennial, sources suggest it is short-lived. Fresh seed was sown last autumn so more can be woven through the border. Under favourable circumstances, I’d expect a perennial plant to last a good few years. That said, many ‘short-lived perennials’ are prolific self-seeders. It may not be noticeable the original plant has gone, only that it appears to have moved from the original spot. One such mover is the pale-lilac-flowered South African geranium, G. robustum, which creates billows of evergreen, silvery filigreed leaves. Once at the front of the border, it has moved 5ft backwards.
Fleeting glories
I have been looking at photos of the garden taken in June a few years ago. One of the south-facing raised beds at the back of the house was almost perfect for a few weeks. It hasn’t touched that since. In the picture, there’s an immature silver-leaved Atriplex halimus acting as a backdrop for 12 delicate
“Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made By singing, ‘Oh, how beautiful,’ and sitting in the shade” Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Glory of the Garden’
spires of Digitalis trojana. This Turkish plant has porcelain-like, pale-bronze cowled flowers, with a spreading white lip. To the side, a Cupid’s dart, Catananche caerulea, adds a dash of sky blue. The plump plaited heads of quaking grass, Briza media ‘Golden Bee’ glitter against the atriplex and a green-leaved Salvia officinalis. To the front, wormwood, probably artemisia ‘Powis Castle’, forms a fine silver-grey mound. Allium flavum buds nose their sinuous way up through Lavender x intermedia ‘Old English’. Both are yet to flower. So, what has changed? The atriplex was sacrificed when it got woody, and to let the strawberry tree, Arbutus unedo, take the space. The digitalis flowered and died. The catananche faded away, swamped by maturing neighbours. Every year, the wormwood would get blackfly, and died too. The sage was pulled up because its foliage was prone to scouring leaf hopper infestations. It would have been nice to preserve a similar floral composition, but things grow and overtop their allotted space. The allium still comes up, and the lavender is still there, but needs replacing in the next year or two. So, we move on, adding and subtracting plants until another fleetingly perfect picture forms itself.