The Colours of Summer
Summertime
We are now smack in the middle of summer. This one has been hot and dry here in SW Ontario. I’ve had to water the gardens most weeks and the planters every day. Some plants have already stopped blooming but most of them are in full swing now. The bees are busy and there are butterflies everywhere. The hummingbirds are also making their rounds of the gardens but are still visiting the nectar feeders regularly.
Rainbow
I thought you might like to see what’s blooming in my gardens right now. Like I said before, some things are done, some have yet to start, but most plants are in full bloom now. The close up pictures should help you appreciate the variety of shape and colour in the flowers. It’s not good enough to call a flower blue! There are so many different shades. Once again, I stand in awe of our awesome Creator and His ability to produce so much diversity in such small packages. Don’t even get me started on the variety of insects that visit the garden!
Variety
I have tried to only get one of each type of plant for my gardens in order to maximize the variety in the space I have. There are a few that come in so many different colours though that I had to get multiple. The coneflowers and day lilies and hollyhocks are examples of these. There are so many different colours among these plants that I felt I needed more than one of each to really enjoy them.
Day lilies
The day lilies are all built along the same lines and it’s really only size and colour that differs. I have seven different varieties in my gardens and they are all beautiful. There are tall orange ones whose flower stalks grew five feet tall this summer. There are yellow ones and three different shades of pink ones. I’ve got two the same, that my husband bought me, that are such a dark pink they are almost red. My favourite one though is a pale apricot colour. They all bloom around the same time in July and each flower lasts for only a day. Thankfully a healthy plant will produce dozens of flowers so they will provide you with a lovely show for most of the month.
Hollyhocks
I have three hollyhocks. There are pictures of two of them in a previous post called “Hungry little worms”. They are very similar types with only the colour differing, one yellow, one red. They are both double flower varieties with the big round leaves. At the farm we had beds of the standard type which has the big round leaves but the simple flowers which look quite a bit like a rose of sharon flower. On one of my trips to the nursery, I saw another type of hollyhock in a fabulous shade of purple and I had to have it. It is shorter than the others and the flower is less like a rose and more like an aster, if that makes sense. The leaves are segmented or lobed and not the round type.
Coneflowers
I have three coneflowers, which are a butterfly favourite. The all come up at the same time and bloom at the same time. They look like the same thing - until they flower! One is the standard pink that almost every garden has. The other two are show stoppers though. One is orange the other red. Now that doesn’t sound very show stopping but it’s the vibrancy of the colours that gets you. The red is such a deep red, like blood. The orange is so bright it’s almost neon. The colours darken as the flowers age but the blooms last for quite a while. I think mine have been going for about a month now - much longer than the other two types of flowers listed above.
So many plants, so little garden
I have a lot of gardens around my house, as I’ve mentioned before, and yet there are still so many plants that I don’t have! I go through the nursery and wonder if I can fit in a few more plants. They are always developing new varieties or hybridizing more exotic blooms so that they can survive our winters. Then there are all the tropical annuals and indoor plants. I love my gardens and I’m quite pleased with the way they look, for the most part, but I do wish I had a bare plot of earth to plant. Few things bring as much joy as planting a garden.
The following is a gallery of everything that is blooming in my gardens currently. Enjoy!
