July Bloom Day

Since the ballast shorted out for the light in our basement greenhouse late last winter and it took awhile to replace it, most of the overwintered plants looked pretty crummy this spring.  Turning misfortune to opportunity, it's been pretty nice having a fresh crop of plants for many of our containers.  The spindly, even leafless basement victims recovered in a sunny spot in the meantime, and now fill in pots and other spots in the garden.  Purple fountain grass and the chartreuse-leaved pelargonium  'Crystal Palace Gem'  are among the fresh faces this year.  

Geranium 'Rozanne' sprawls over early-spring bloomers like bergenia and hellebores, churning out blooms from late May through frost, even in part sun.  That's double impatiens in the hanging basket.  

Watering has been a chore during this hot, dry summer.  Most of the pots not directly in the garden have saucers to save water - especially the thirsty impatiens in little pots along this short path between patio and lawn.

The mini-rose has been blooming all season.

Hosta 'Fujibotan' has lavender-pink double blossoms on tall scapes.  It's just starting to bloom, and will keep going for almost a month.   This year it has twenty-one flower scapes!  

I love this combo of  Dragon Wing begonias and Diamond Frost Euphorbia.  

The peachy pelargonium and petunia in the pot on the left are basement survivors.  The geranium is five years old, and amazingly, Supertunia Vista Silverberry, fondly nicknamed Spring Fling Petunia, (gift from Proven Winners for participants at Garden Bloggers' Spring Fling Chicago 2009,) has survived three winters in the basement.

Cardinal flower, Lobelia cardinalis, a native hummingbird magnet, just started blooming.

Rudbeckia 'Herbstsonne' hasn't much liked our hot, dry summer.  They're two feet shorter, and not nearly as full as they normally are by the time they start blooming.  The first flowers are smaller too.   Behind the rudbeckias and coneflowers, Joe Pye weed is shorter than usual too.

'Sunday Gloves' daylily seems oblivious to the heat.

This brunnera was a volunteer seedling that popped up over here from a neighbor's plants.  It's the first time I've seen a brunnera rebloom.

We have heirloom potatoes from Landreth Seed growing in two of  the samples the nice folks at  Smart Pots gave me last August at the Independent Garden Center Show at Navy Pier.  Potatoes have nice foliage, pretty blooms, and they're fun to grow.  We're looking forward to harvesting our first home-grown potatoes in a few weeks.

Culver's Root, moved last fall,  seems to be thriving in its new, slightly sunnier spot along with a coneflower.  In the background, 'Blue Paradise' phlox, new last year and still small, just started blooming.  Geranium 'Biokovo' is reblooming for the first time, and barely peeking out from behind the tree, 'Jacob Cline' monarda is very popular with hummingbirds.  

Here's a different perspective where you can see the phlox and monarda a little better.  Heuchera villosa 'Mocha' shows up in this shot too.  Besides the nice foliage, this heuchera blooms all season long.

Bloom Day posts here tend to include a lot of closeups, so it seemed fun to change it up with some long shots this time.  Hope you enjoyed them.  To see more Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day posts that will surely include closeups and long shots of what's blooming in gardens around the world today, please visit our host, Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

Wildflower Wednesday - Cardinal Flower

Lobelia cardinalis, whose common name is cardinal flower, is a plant I've lusted after for years, and the first plant I thought of for the area of our swale that stays moist all the time. Cardinal flowers can be somewhat short-lived, but have a better chance of longer-term survival and self-sowing in consistently moist, or even wet soil in full to part sun.

Native in Illinois, cardinal flowers are highly favored by hummingbirds, their primary pollinators. This year hummingbirds have seemed more scarce than usual here. Although the tiny birds aren't easy to see and even harder to photograph way back where the cardinal flowers are, if we look carefully, we see them sipping nectar from the brilliant red blooms off and on all day.

Aside from a few hostas I've transplanted upstream at the back of the swale as the shade garden has been planted (previously, the overabundant hostas had been 'place holders' in the shade garden,) the plan is to plant exclusively native plants in and around the swale. Three years ago a river birch, red-twig dogwood and a pair of winterberry hollies were planted slightly upstream. They're all thriving in the moist soil. Early this summer, heleniums were added, started from seeds from Monica's seed swap late last winter. They should love the moist soil, but might prefer more sun than they'll get here.

With cultural requirements identical to cardinal flowers, blue lobelia will also be tried in the always-moist part of the swale. It 'only' took about seven years to get the shade garden entirely planted. The swale is much smaller and should go more quickly.

Wildflower Wednesday is celebrated on the fourth Wednesday of the month. For links to more posts, please visit Gail at Clay and Limestone.