Herbaceous Borders : June

A fresh sunny morning with a clear blue sky. The sun is shining through the tops of the trees. It has been getting light since 3.50 am and now ( 5.30) the birds have finished their chorus and are up and about. I was woken by a thrush on the roof and opened the french doors to hear it more clearly. The Downs are lit up and all the field shapes are clearly picked out by the sun. Someone in the valley has a cockerel and its crowing is telling me to get up and get on.

There’s a fine dew on everything and the plants look green, lush and refreshed. One of the white tubs near the back door is full of fully opened Stargazer lilies, and the two zinc planters are are looking pretty with arrangements in grey, lemon and blue. The first Pelargoniums and Cosmos are bright and blowsy in the new raised border.

The herbaceous borders have been very colourful already, and I have tidied up several barrowloads of spent Geranium ‘Johnson’s blue’ stems, overhanging Alchemilla mollis and also some nettles and thistles. We have trimmed the Buxus boxes, which immediately creates some full stops in the borders amongst all the burgeoning profusion. The foxgloves, Digitalis purpurea, have been beautiful and still have a few bells hanging on at their now, very wonky tops. Also, there’s still Symphytum flowering. Amazing how it goes on for months. There are many Geranium Johnson’s Blue’ , big, blue and reliable ( a horticultural, not necessarily political statement); all self set and looking good with the yellow Loosestrife and Hypericum.

A good balance of foliage this year: not too much bronze Fennel to dominate, and the colour and texture ranges from spiky Phormium and Echium and Acanthus ( bears breeches) , to rounded Sedum, Catalpa, Alchemilla, and Sweet William flowers, to feathery grasses, Fennel and Mimosa, and the solid shapes of Buxus and Yew. It’s a good year for the borders, they have form, vibrancy and variation.