What's looking good in June?

I bought it as acacia dealbata with a proper label from a repuable GC But that doesn't mean they aren't wrong. It is flowering as I speak and the pictures are from today. I don't know why it is late but the flowers are more yellow than in the photo the colour doesn't seem to be coming accross. :confused: It doesn't grow in stonking sunlight and the ground is very wet with quite poor drainage?

 

Sorry pete forgot to say, yes in permenant planting position all year round.

 

Found this in the greenhouse today!

Trailing plant for June, sorry, I should know but lost the label!...Anybody?

 

Anagallis?

 

My favourite fuschia, Bella Rosella

and some lilies. The white one at the back has a lovely perfume, the coloured ones have none.

 

Liz, that fuschia flower looks enormous!

 

It is one of the very big American ones, the flowers this year are extra large and as the plant tends to be a bit spindly I don't know where all the energy comes from. I tried to tone the colours down a bit, it has peachy pink outside petals and cerise/ peach inner ones. I like it because my elder daughter is Bella and she loves pink!

 

This is Delospermum cooperi tumbling over a 'devon wall'. It is thoroughly reliable here and tolerates everything the winters throw at it. Usually there's just the one flush of flower, but in recent years it has continued flowering intermittently until winter.



I can never get a decent pic of this, my favourite of Cornus. It is the evergreen Cornus capitata sometimes known as the 'Himalayan Strawberry Tree'. This young tree is flowering for its second time and was planted as a 30cms. high seedling in 2000. It is now just over 5m. high with more to go and although evergreen, casts a pleasant, dappled shade. The pale creamy yellow bracts are over 10cms. across and fade through to white before taking on rich shades of pink. Those central 'bobbles' are the true flowers and later turn into large rounded vivid red, strawberry-like fruits. They look luscious on the tree, but taste quite unpleasant.

 

That "Delospermum cooperi " is gorgeous - its been added to my gotta have list. Thanks

 

Dave P, it looks like a lampranthus, what's the difference?

 

Well, there's not a lot of difference superficially, but generally Lampranthus tend to have much longer and more substantial leaves. Lampranthus flowers are generally a bit larger with wider, slightly fewer petals, but I can't really see a lot of difference in floral characters, even though I grow several fairly close together. The Delospermum has quite short leaves, generally 1.5cms. long and in D. cooperi at least, they are a very striking shade of silvery grey. Even without the flowers, the clumps look good. Many Lampranthus leaves are half or twice as long again, usually thicker and tend to be green or translucent green.

I must have planted this back around 1997/8 and although it has been quite severly butchered at times and freeze-dried at others, it has always performed well. Considering it eakes out an existence on 5 - 6cms. depth of the most impoverished soil imaginable, I think it deserves some recognition. I never water it and at times am sure it will shrivel to nothing, but the slightest hint of rain causes it to plump up and rush into growth - even in winter.

Further down another clump surrounds Billbergia nutans, which produces salmon pink bracted wands of flower at this time of year. They look very good together. Well, normally they do, but conditions have become so impoverished that even a toughie like the Billbergia has become dwarfed in the past couple of years. I must rip it all out and add some decent 'gubbins'.

 

Delosperma cooperi is definitly hardier than lampranthus, I've had lampranthus die on me most winters but the delosperma has looked a bit down but it comes back, up to now.

[ 22. June 2006, 09:13 PM: Message edited by: pete ]