Hiding a stump

Cutting down a leylandii hedge last year to create this garden left a couple of stumps, left deliberately high to add height to the garden. This is what one looks like now - mainly honeysuckle and climbing rose, but you will spot other things.

Hidden day lilies

Days lilies, or hemerocallis, were spotted hidden in the bog garden covered by rose bay willow herb. Stripped out, this is what they look like now. Planted nearly 30 years ago, they love the damp.
Unfortunately, so do the rushes.

Who was Mr Fuchs?

Three fuschsia's, Koralle, tryphylla type with long tube (top)

The large version of Blackie

and the Fantasia type which holds its flower upwards

Pineapple lily

A weed to die for, has always loved this spot with dry roots into the crazy paving

Penstemons

My favourite penstemons, Stapleford Gem (blue) and Raven (purple)

Floral bouquet

Here I can see with the Lychnis some penstemons, geranium, phlox, and a potentilla ... and astrantia, rose and foxgloves  ...

Lychnis

Two versions of Lychnis coronaria, a type of campion

4 Rose Bushes for £1

2x 4 miniature roses in a pot (£1) from Morrisons make up this display.

A couple of potentillas

Goldfinger and Pink Beauty. Once called Potentilla fruticosa (shrubby cinquefoil) it is not related to the perennial potentillas (cinquefoils) and has been now renamed Dasiphora fruticosa. 
  

Pastels

This linaria, 'Purple Toadflax' is definitely not purple. I am selecting the more interesting seedlings of this non-troublesome native flower.

 Penstemon Stapleford Gem, one of my old favourites, is looking good at the moment. Sometimes wrongly sold as Sour Grapes because of the initials.

And a clematis being established in a hard-pruned very old box hedge that illustrated why box hedges should not be left unclipped for 50 years.

Roses

This top rose is Paul's Himalayan Musk (a new planting when its mature predecessor died)

and New Dawn, in its 20th year.

Honeysuckle

This honeysuckle is wild sown but now a veritate old lady after being in this spot for 30 years. It is effectively a honeysuckle tree.

Penstemons and Friends

Penstemon Stapleford Gem (pale) with Plum Jerkum, the new version of Midnight and Russian River which never really thrived.

Below, new Penstemon Strawberry Fancy mingles with astrantia and white lychnis (campion)

Garlic dressed to conquer

Tulbaghia violacea, originally from South Africa, is named after the governor of the Cape of Good Hope around 1770. Its leaves have a faint garlic smell.

Species yellow-cream foxglove

Digitalis lutea - the flowers are smaller and the flower-heads packed. A honey-pot for bees.

Seedling roses

Climbing roses, offspring of Kiftsgate, the huge climber - these two plants have a fuller flower.

Shock In Pink

Three roses, first Rosa Mundi (translates Rose of the World) = name Rosamund. Pink and white bi-colour

Raubritter, very tight buds

 and I think Esfahan

Mock Orange

These philadelphus are late flowering. The top is variegated (enlarge the picture to see) named Innocence.

This one is a mature unknown variety planted at least 20 years ago.

Water lilies

A couple of water lilies in our small ponds

Toadflax

This is the new bed constructed since last summer when a leylandii hedge was removed. The picture shows 'purple toadflax' in the linaria family. They are wildflowers which arrived naturally. Having seen them grown and labelled in the Welsh Botanic Garden, I am selecting the best forms such as this glorious pale pink. The purple form is in the foreground. Seen from the road, they attract very favourable comment.

Crazy Sax

Saxifrage hair-do on an Omnipuss pot...

Penstemon isophyllus

I notice that the secies form can come out redder than this, but it was a nice surprise to see this has survived.

Dahlias

A confession - owing to the rain and out holidays, I never quite got around to planting ot the dahlias I stored last winter. Here they are in the polytunnel - oh dear.

Riot!

This is what we call the hexagonal bed, for obvious reasons. A raised bed of railway sleepers. Planting is mainly geranium and nepeta, with a clematis in the middle and a deutzisa now gone over.

Beauty bush

Kolkwitzia amabilis, introduced to Britain by 'Chinese' Wilson 1901. Distantly related to the honeysuckle. It was named after Richard Kolkwitz, a professor of botany in Berlin. We missed the full flowering when in Scotland.

Cottage garden...

A couple of beds for a change... geraniums plus addictive additives

White corydalis

This white corydalis flowers for 8 months per year...

Black Broom

Black Broom

Fuzzy Deutzia.

Deutzia scabra 'Flora Plena'.  This specimen  started life as a cutting from a friend's garden. It is over 13 foot (4 metres) high and covered with white flower panicles (middle picture) for about 3 weeks. It is nicknamed 'Fuzzy Deutzia' as flowers are like fluffy balls.  What's in a name?  J van der Deutz was the money man who financed planthunting and employed Thunberg (who had other flowers named after him). 'Scabra' means rough, after the bark (bottom picture) which cracks and peels. Flora plena means 'full flowered', that is double flowers rather than dingle petals. The first one was imported in 1822 by Robert Fortune from China. This specimen pictured is about 25 years old.

Three interesting penstemons

Three old fashioned penstemons with a curious story.

Top, Mother of Pearl. Because nurseries abbreviated this to MoP, it sometimes appeared as Mrs Mop.

Second, Stapleford Gem, an iridescent blue, deeper than Mother of Pearl. Nurseries would abbreviate this to SG.

Third, Sour Grapes (below), also abbreviated as SG. And guess what, the two became confused. Two thirds of penstemons bought as Sour Grapes even today turn out to be Stapleford Gem. The proper genealogies of the two plants was sorted out by the Royal Horticultural Society in the 1990s.