My garden in Summer

Each year my garden seems to be different, with some old favourites returning and some new arrivals bringing fresh joys.

Below is a rose (Wedding Day, I think), which comes over from our neighbour’s garden. It rambles through the branches of the eucalyptus in the front garden and fills the air with delicious perfume that penetrates through the open windows to fill the bedrooms with fragrance. The bees love it.

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I don’t know the name of the lovely pink climbing rose shown below. It was in the garden when we moved in six years ago and has beautiful delicate flowers, which sadly have little perfume. It looks so attractive rambling through the ivy and this is the corner of the garden where we often photograph the dyed skeins of South Downs Yarn.

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Each year I look forward to the annual pelargoniums, with their brilliant reds. (I always seem to choose the reds, rarely the pink or white ones.) Another bonus is that they are rarely attacked by slugs and snails.

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How I love the combination of the brilliant orange from the calendula and the blue of this hardy geranium.

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Every year I look forward to the return of the hot reds and oranges of the helenium flowers.

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Below are the yellow spires of lysimachia punctata with feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium) in the foreground.

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My small dye garden continues to flourish, as the photos below show.

Here dyer’s broom (Genista tinctoria) is just coming into flower on the left, with hedge bedstraw (Galium mollugo) on the right and in the foreground climbing through the obelisk

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This year my wild madder (Rubia peregrina) is producing tiny flowers, which I hope will later produce some seeds.

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Just visible below on the lower left are the yellow flowers of lady’s bedstraw (Galium verum) with saw-wort (Serratula tinctoria) in bud on the right.

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