wendyswonderlandgarden

So today we went to choose a new rose for the flower bed by the road. I asked daddy to dig a hole to see if we could get down deep enough last week and fortunately he was successful. When mum and daddy moved in here about 40 odd years ago there were about 100 roses but many were old or diseased and therefore dug out. I planted 3 new ones a few years ago and studied the catalogue hard picking a nice colour and good scent. Both very important in choosing a rose. I like roses of all colours but not purple or black or obviously altered colours if you know what I mean.

I enjoyed going round the garden centre smelling lots of roses this afternoon although I knew I wanted a pale pink colour and here is the one I eventually picked – Dorothy House. 

I fell in love with many and mum bought this one too – Midsummer, although I have no idea where it’s going as the space is limited!

As many of my readers will know I sowed and then planted pale yellow cosmos but today i have noticed this pink one flowering! Now I do like pink in the garden, however, not when I’m expecting pale yellow.

Secondly, last year I ordered 3 blue scabious plants online from a company I won’t name but whose plants are often dead on arrival! The plant is now flowering and guess what, its not blue, it’s white. Once again I am very fond of white in the garden but blue would have made a nice change. Now there is a hydrangea also in that flower bed which Daddy put ericaceous compost round so there is a tiny chance it’s changed the colour of this plant as well but we may never know. It’ll be interesting to see if the other plants turn out blue!

It’s a lovely sunny day here today with blue sky. Although I have to say it was raining 2 hours ago on the washing! You just don’t know what weather you are getting next!

I sowed my wallflowers in the greenhouse yesterday and have Sweet William still to do, again, the last batch gave poor results so I’ve bought new seeds and I’ll try again.

The sweetpeas are giving off a lovely scent as I walk round the garden.

A few pictures of what’s currently flowering here this month, slightly spoilt for choice at the moment! All pictures from the front garden of the semi detached bought and mum and daddy a few years ago. The garden is quite a work in progress and is likely to change a bit this season as plants are added and moved about. 

First picture isn’t actually flowering but daddy brought a twig home from Madeira one year and it’s grown into this. It has purple flowers and is a Tradescantia I think.

These are 2 creamy cosmos I grew from seed, I was expecting them to be slightly taller and what have grown more I’ve I’d known. 

Hydrangea and astilbe

Crocosmia Lucifer bulbs, we have these on various places and the more we dig out the more they grow back 

Budlehia and Agrantheum ( daisy like flower probably spelt wrong)

Pink lynchis, self seeds a lot and often moves itself from where I planted it after 1 flowering! We have white ones too this year for the first time – self sworn again

Another hydrangea not as healthy as the first one above

Dianthus which lives in the greenhouse in the winter 

Us Brits always like to discuss the weather, it’s always too hot, too wet, too cold. Never just right! So it’s been raining here quite a bit for the past few days but I’m so glad as the garden desperately needed it and our water butts were quickly becoming empty!

I have a picture of the rose ‘Nostalgia’ for you today, it has a beautiful scent similar to peaches I think.

Following on from a couple of different posts I thought I would do a post specifically showing plants from the back garden (original house). It is pretty small and has 3 sheds including one dedicated to garden tools and other garden related stuff, also a summer house which is hardly used now but does feature on one picture. It’s basically 2 raised beds either side of the summer house with mostly trees and bushes on one side including my cherry tree – it has 2 fruits so far this year and they aren’t ripe enough for harvesting so I hold the birds don’t get there first! The other side is mostly flowers and I do feature them occasionally in the blog. We have about 10 pots with lilies, acers, 2 tiny roses – they get smaller every year and a few other things. There is a double skinned wall by the house with 2 roses with their roots in the drain I think. So here are my pictures: 

2 different Clematis 

Potentilla with rose like red and yellow flowers if it flowers this year

Persicaria

White sweetpeas

Hydrangea 

Hemerocallis (I think)

Dianthus – new this year 

2 Penstemons

Red lily 

Yellow lily 

So you all know the name of my blog is Wendys Wonderland Garden, did you ever wonder where the name came from? No, well I’ll tell you anyway.

I recently found a picture of the original Wonderland garden, it was between the front doors of our house and the semi next door. It has sadly been built over now and the plants redistributed across the garden although some are still in pots. It was a secluded area, with a big lilac at the end and a bit of a secret garden probably why I named it a Wonderland garden. When it got built over and I started the blog I just liked the name beginning with W like my name and it’s stuck. The blog though includes the whole of the gardens (2 front and 2 back) as we later bought the aforementioned semi and built a porch (to connect the 2 houses ) over my precious garden where I worked hard to make it nice. There were hellebores, a hosta, penstamen, poppies, an echinacea that didn’t survive the move, bleeding hearts, astrantia, Michaelmais daisy and a few other things. Here are the pictures. I still have the poppy although it’s changed colour now and the last picture is the poppy earlier this year flowering. So there you there, just in case you wondered!

The poppy as it is now. Funny how the colour has changed but I’m sure it’s the same one – Pattys Plum I think. 

Just a few pictures of ‘firsts’ of the season. A rose called ‘Hot Chocolate’ with a lovely scent. It’s actually not the first rose to flower in the garden but it is the first of the ‘new’ roses only 2 years old (I think) opposed to the others which have been in the garden all my life!

A purple cornflower grown from seed and planted only a few weeks ago.

A sweet pea in a pot, not grown as tall as expected so far and therefore looks slightly ridiculous with the 2m supports it’s got! But it smells amazing and is more purple than the picture shows