The Colours of June

June always proves to be an extremely busy month with design work, planting and maintaining my own garden. As they say, ‘gardens are never finished, they are ever evolving’ and with that in mind always make time to revisit gardens that I have designed and planted to monitor progress and to carry out any editing required. Ongoing discussions with clients about how to manage and maintain their gardens is such an important part of my work and one that I really enjoy. It is such a pleasure to see clients enjoying their gardens and even more so this year with the additional stresses of Covid19.

I have particularly enjoyed seeing where some of the plants that self-seed themselves have popped up in the gardens I have revisited visited and in my own. As long as they are not too prolific the majority are easy to manage in that they are easy to weed out if they are not wanted. Some of the best planting combinations arise from unexpected self-sown plants. Self sown plants also give a garden a much more natural feeling and more relaxed atmosphere to a garden. These have been my favourite this month:

Linaria purpurea coming up through Centaurea dealbata

Eschoscolzia – Californian Poppy coming up through Allium schubertii and Geranium ‘Rozanne’

Digitalis – Foxgloves – winding their way through Geranium sylvaticum, Astrantia ‘Hadspen Blood’

Gardens are also in full colour and the increasing strength of the sunlight adds to the sense of richness and colour depth. I also try and place plants to take full advantage of the sun. For example, planting plants with good foliage so that they can be backlit adds additional interest and beauty even when they are not in flower as illustrated by Crocosmia and Euphorbia foliage.