June Blooms in My Flower Garden
Early June is such an exciting time at the farm because so much is growing and blooming, especially in my flower garden.
The perennial flower cutting garden is located just outside my main greenhouse at the foot of my long clematis pergola. Every season, I add a number of flowering plants to this collection. And right now it is bursting with vibrant colors - the poppies, roses, lupines, goat's beard, columbines, and dianthus are all blooming. I am so proud of how well it has developed.
Here are some recent photos, enjoy.
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- This garden bed is just outside my fenced flower cutting garden – both are among the first ones seen when visiting my farm. My cutting garden is several years old now and has developed more and more every year. I wanted the plants to be mixed, so every bed in this garden would be interesting and colorful.
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- Anyone who visits this garden admires the bearded irises. These flowers get their common name from their blooms, which consist of upright petals called “standards,” pendant petals called “falls,” and fuzzy, caterpillar-like “beards” that rest atop the falls.
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- Bearded irises need full sun, good drainage, lots of space, and quality soil. They come in just about every flower color, both solids, and bi-colors. Branched flower stalks range in height from eight-inch miniatures to 48-inch giants – and all make excellent cut flowers.
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- I grow many alliums here at the farm and they continue to bloom so beautifully. These easy-to-grow bulbs come in a broad palette of colors, heights, bloom times, and flower forms. They make excellent cut flowers for fresh or dried bouquets. What’s more, alliums are relatively resistant to deer, voles, chipmunks, and rabbits.
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- These are the large leaves of Rodgersia – a genus of flowering plants in the Saxifragaceae family. Rodgersia are herbaceous perennials originating from east Asia. The common name is Roger’s Flower.
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- And here are the Rodgersia flowers. These tiny white to pink flowers arrive in late spring into midsummer.
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- Robust and beautiful, Nectaroscordum siculum, or Sicilian Honey Garlic, displays showy clusters of gracefully drooping bell-shaped flowers in late spring to summer.
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- Ornithogalum umbellatum, commonly known as star of Bethlehem, is a bulbous perennial that is native to the Mediterranean region. Narrow, semi-erect, grass-like, linear leaves grow in a basal clump with each stem bearing 10 to 20 starry white flowers in an open, umbel-like, terminal cluster. Flowers are striped green on the outside. Flowers open near noon and close at sunset or in cloudy weather.
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- Aruncus dioicus, commonly called goat’s beard, is a Missouri native plant which occurs in moist woodlands and along bluffs in the central and southeast part of the State. A tall, erect, bushy, clump-forming plant typically growing four to six feet high features pinnately compound, dark green foliage and showy, plume-like spikes of tiny, cream colored flowers which rise well above the foliage in early to mid summer.
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- But don’t confuse this Aruncus dioicus with the Astible, which is a smaller plant with straight upright plumes.
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- Right now, there are gorgeous poppies blooming everywhere – those colorful tissue paper-like flowers that look stunning both in the garden and in the vase. Poppies are flowering plants in the subfamily Papaveroideae of the family Papaveraceae. They produce open single flowers gracefully located on long thin stems, sometimes fluffy with many petals and sometimes smooth.
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- Poppies are attractive, easy-to-grow herbaceous annual, biennial or short-lived perennial plants.
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- The plants typically grow to about two feet in height forming colorful flowers during spring and into summer.
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- Flowers have four to six petals, many stamens forming a conspicuous whorl in the center of the flower and an ovary of two to many fused carpels. The petals are showy and may be almost any color. Poppies require very little care, whether they are sown from seed or planted when young – they just need full sun and well-drained soil.
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- There are numerous types of dianthus – most have pink, red, or white flowers with notched petals. This is Dianthus ‘Sweet William.’
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- Here is another dianthus – very different with its fringed blooms.
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- And here is a dark pink variety – also heavily fringed.
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- I have many roses in my flower garden. Some of them were transferred here from my home in East Hampton. I am so happy with how well they’re doing. In the last couple years, I’ve added to this collection of roses – David Austin roses and various varieties from Northland Rosarium. A rose is a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus Rosa, in the family Rosaceae. There are more than a hundred species and thousands of cultivars.
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- Roses come in many different colors, such as pink, peach, white, red, magenta, yellow, copper, vermilion, purple, and apricot. And many different shapes. This one is also very fragrant.
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- Here is a beautiful rose in light pink and white. Single blooms are fully opened and almost flat, consisting of one to seven petals per bloom.
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- Johnny Jump Ups are a popular viola. They are native to Spain and the Pyrennes Mountains and are easy to grow. Small plants produce dainty, fragrant blooms – some in deep purple and yellow.
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- And here are some of the first lupines of the season. These flowers are attractive and spiky, reaching one to four feet in height. Lupine flowers may be annual and last only for a season or perennial, returning for a few years in the same spot in which they were planted. The lupine plant grows from a long taproot and loves full sun. The flowers are produced in dense or open whorls on an erect spike, each flower about one to two centimeters long. The pea-like flowers have an upper standard, or banner, two lateral wings, and two lower petals fused into a keel.
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- Lady’s mantle, Alchemilla vulgaris, grows along both sides of the path of my cutting garden. It is a clumping perennial which typically forms a mound of long-stalked, circular, scallop-edge light green leaves, with tiny, star-shaped, chartreuse flowers.
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- Geum, commonly called avens, is a genus of about 50 species of rhizomatous perennial herbaceous plants in the rose family, widespread across Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa, and New Zealand. They produce flowers on wiry stalks, in shades of orange, white, red, and yellow. Geum is a relative of the strawberry. Its bright and showy, cup-shaped flowers appear in late spring.
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- Flowers open every day in this garden and we continue to plant more and more flowering plants here. I will share more photos as new blossoms appear.
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