Wordless Wednesday ~ Abbeywood Gardens, Cheshire

 

IAVOM ~ Slip Sliding Into Autumn

 

It's Monday and time for a vase of flowers to kick-start not only a new week but a new season too whichever hemisphere you live in. In my vase this week are :

• A stem from dahlia 'Molly Raven' - a dahlia bred by the plantswoman Sarah Raven and named after her daughter. I planted this last year and although she came through the winter in the ground she hasn't done as well this year. I intended to add to her numbers but the tubers were all sold out by the time I thought to look. I will have to make sure that I'm off the mark for next year.  I think that Sarah Raven is the only stockist of this so supplies must be limited.
• A couple of danglies in the shape of leycesteria formosa aka the Himalayan honeysuckle. This is an easy going deciduous shrub which is partial to shady woodland areas. It is now in the process of forming berries which contain extremely sticky seed. It's a fairly insignificant plant for most of the time but comes into colour at the back end of the year and has continued to show colour into November some years.

• Some of the impostor 'Purple Fizz' cosmos that I grew from seed in spring. Not what they claimed to be on the seed packet but still pleasing enough once I got over my initial disappointment.
• Hiding behind the cosmos is some pickings from aster (now called something else which doesn't trip of my tongue easily) 'Little Carlow'. This was the main flower in Cathy's vase last Monday. This hardy perennial has clouds of most pretty small lavender-blue flowers from late summer well into October.
• Some spikes of linaria purpurea - these flower on and off for some considerable time and the bees like them. The only drawback is that I've never managed to cull them before some seed has escaped and then it seems that I'm forever extracting many emerging seedlings. The pink version linaria 'Canon Went' is restrained in comparison.

Thanks as always to Cathy who blogs over at 'Rambling In The Garden' and who kindly invites fellow bloggers to share their vases each Monday be it autumn, winter, spring or summer. This week as autumn begins we are promised some extremely wet and windy weather especially in the middle of the week. Part of my bulb order should be arriving this week but I'm not sure how much planting I will be able to achieve. Still it will be most exciting to open the box and dream of the spring and summer flowers that will emerge from those bulbs next year. 

In A Vase On Monday ~ 'Summer Days Drifting Away'

 

There is some heat in my vase this week in contrast to the cooler and wet day that it is out there. Spreading some sunshine are :

• Dahlia 'Copper Boy' planted in 2022 - these remained in the ground and came through the prolonged bitterly cold spell that we had last December to make for much larger plants this year. They were very well mulched before the temperature plummeted. Their only fault is that the stems are on the droopy side possibly because of the size of the flower. It's a big 'un.
• Helianthus annus' Claret' - or another case of a flower not reading the seed packet. My friend who I passed some seedlings on to inherited the real deep wine-red deal rather than the striped marmalade version that I ended up with. Still until recent years my sunflowers were invariably nobbled by molluscs well before they could grow to adulthood so I'm happy with any flowers whatever the colour. 
• Rudbeckia 'Sahara' - a now favourite half-hardy perennial. This year's batch of seed has produced a mix of colours with both single and double forms. I have a soft spot for the singles. I sowed the seed in early March on the heated sand bench in the greenhouse making sure they were under cover on cold nights. Previously I've sown them in a heated propagator in early February but I don't think on balance that they gain that much from an earlier start.

The vase is an old Keiller marmalade jar which was an eBay purchase.

Thanks as always to Cathy over at 'Rambling In The Garden' for her impeccable hosting. Here the imminent arrival of the autumn equinox is being ushered in with a spell of predicted wild and wet windy weather this week. I was able to spend a few hours this weekend pottering about outside and have culled the tomato plants, taken salvia and lemon verbena cuttings, filled that green waste bin to the very brim and have sown more hardy annuals. I think that the next couple of days will be hunkering in days but I've resigned myself to that and have just been cheered by the sight of the first signs of germination from some pansy seedlings sown just nine days ago. Now to pick some apples before the wind brings them down!

'In The Pink' ~ Part 2

 

Another variation on a theme of this week in my vase this Monday - well mainly pink with a hint of burgundy creeping in. The occupants are :

• Cosmos - I purchased the seed in good faith as 'Fizzy Purple', the seed packet's blurb promising large purple coloured flowers. Something went amiss along the way as the flowers have varied in colour and not a single one was purple. These flowers are from the most attractive to me plant. 
• Astrantia major 'Burgundy Manor' - a hardy perennial with both dark flowers and dark stems. This is it's second flush of flowers. I cut off the first batch before they went to seed. 
• More of the achillea 'Summer Berries' - a long flowering perennial sown in the spring of 2020.
• Aster divaricatus also known as the white wood aster - a late flowering perennial. I bought my original plant from the sales area in the garden at Powis Castle in north Wales many moons ago. It's a most unassuming plant that just gently gets on with it's own business.

A big thank you as always to Cathy over at 'Rambling In The Garden' who generously gathers us together weekly to share our vases. Here we have the week that we have dreamed of since June - blue skies, sunshine, soaring temperatures and not a drop of rain in sight. Bliss, although I may be uttering those words "It's too hot!" before long. Happy gardening.