Our Summer Solstice Small English Garden Tour, Stunning Colour Container Flowers, Plant Prune & Fix

Join us friends! Our summer solstice tour around our small garden in Kent, South East England features delightful new flowers and some beloved old favourites. We’re growing Papaver Somniferum ‘Lauren’s Grape’ for the first time. This lusciously plummy-purple poppy was seen in the stylish borders of Monty Don’s RHS ‘Dog Garden’, at the Chelsea flower show this year. Agapanthus ‘Brilliant Blue’ provides heavenly colour, adding depth and coolness to the container display, and even though there is barely space on the patio for another agapanthus, there is always plenty of room in the heart for these divinely beautiful flowers. Begonia ‘Nonstop Rose Petticoat’ is looking lush and lovely, with lavish ruffles and intense colour, adding powerful rose-pink energy to planter combinations. Our Shirley Poppies continue their floriferous summer performance, bringing the garden alive with a busy chorus of happy bumblebees.

I’ll show you a top hack for extending the height of your ornamental plant pots, to accommodate a summer annual above your perennial bulbs. Plus, we’ll explain how we prune our perennial wallflowers Erysimum ‘Super Bowl Mauve’ and fix the stem of wind-snapped salvia ‘Amistad’ to preserve plant health and flower power, attracting bees and hummingbird hawk-moths. Finally, I’ll investigate why our dreamy blue English lavender ‘Folgate’ needs a little extra attention to keep it beautiful and shapely for years to come.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Start the summer solstice tour
0:23 The garden as our ‘Living Journal’
2:01 Shirley Poppy Bee Fest
3:17 Papaver somniferum ‘Lauren’s Grape’
3:30 Monty Don’s ‘Dog Garden’
6:22 Potting on Opium Poppy ‘Lauren’s Grape’
9:32 Hack for extending the height of plant pots
13:19 Agapanthus ‘Brilliant Blue’
15:35 Pruning for Repeat Blooming perennial wallflower
18:40 Begonia ‘Nonstop Rose Petticoat’
21:56 Salvia ‘Amistad’
23:43 Lavender ‘Folgate’
26:26 Thank you friends, until next time...

ATTRIBUTIONS WITH OUR THANKS

Dog images (modified)
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Hoverfly image (modified)
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Bird images (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
© Giles Laurent, gileslaurent.com, License CC BY-SA, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons
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Benjamint444, GFDL 1.2 http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licen..., via Wikimedia Commons