Too much pink is a theme for my garden this summer. I chose pink flowers (peonies here) that turned out to be much more vigorous over time than I expected, and I did not have the heart to take them out or even cut back. Here are pictures of where I have used rich purple clematis in different shades to cut the sugary look produced by too much pink.

These Bowl of Beauty peonies are such a metaphor for life. If I had known how bonkers they would be 20 years after I planted them, I would have chosen a different variety. I could not imagine how they would multiply and the over-the-top impact of their colour en masse. And yet, I am curiously attached to them now, and could not imagine summer without them.

This clematis, Perle D’Azur, is 20 years old. Its great trusses of flowers at the boundary of my garden make such a valuable contribution in July, when a lot of summer flowers have gone over. It’s growing here with a golden hop, which is providing the bright green leaves.

This is my wild flower verge’s third summer. It used to be a patch of grass, weeds and blind daffodils (daffodils that no longer flowered). Wild flowers would not have coped with the competition if I had just sowed their seed on top. I therefore had to dig out all the old grass, weeds and bulbs, which was a good if arduous lockdown project in winter 2021. I sowed wildflower seed in 2021 and again in 2022, but this spring the flowers produced enough seed for over sowing to be unnecessary. The verge looks lovely over the summer, but is not a great sight the rest of the year!

These are my favourite tulip, Barcelona, sold by Bloms Bulbs (no commission for mentioning them sadly!). Bloms advised me to grow tulips in pots as slug damage to the bulbs when they were planted in the flowerbed was causing the plants to grow distorted. So I plant them in pots and move them into position as they come into flower. I am so pleased with this method, but as tulip heads are fragile, it’s not wise to give the pots too long a journey to get into position!

As previously mentioned, I went to the Chelsea Flower Show last week. It is a very intense experience as there is so much to see but it is also so crowded, so many visitors as well as film crews. Every year, there are one or two plants that feature in a lot of the show gardens. This year, it was the turn of Thalictrum ‘Black Stockings’, this pink flower with dark grey stems. I thought it would go well with some of the moody purples in my garden and rushed to look it up on line. Often a new plant to me turns out to be unsuitable because it needs acid soil (mine is alkaline) or wet ground, mine is dry. Thalictrum was a different sort of disappointment though as the plant is normally 2m high. Somehow at Chelsea, all the plants were only 60cm or so. It’s wonderful show, but not always very accurate in its representation of plants!

Here’s a subtle macropetalata clematis looking very fresh and embodying Spring. I am so pleased with my garden right now, all the extra work I have put in over the last 3 or 4 years has really paid off. This clematis, however, has been in situ a long time and wasn’t part of lockdown perfectionism!

Even at the start of November in the UK, here is a bee harvesting pollen from a Centaurea flower. I am quietly proud of my contribution to the bees through my garden. Bees are both globally and in the UK under threat. If you want to help too, my advice, just grow some flowers. Don’t worry too much which. Just flowers.