What's Looking Good in July 2020

As usual, the Verbena bonariensis tends to grow its best in the worst soil conditions in the garden - but its lesser liking of good soil doesn't stop it seeding everywhere

This is in a six inch gravel and soil border between the lawn and patio that we never water. Well over 6ft tall


Odds and ends in pots around the patio







This was covered in flowers the day before I took the photo! I need to do some deadheading


The other day I half filled a wheelie bin with bindweed that I pulled out of this bed in the front garden. I hadn't seen it until it emerged above the undergrowth. The bed has gone through its yellow and white phase and is coming into its pink and red phase






The Veronicastrum in the background is now beginning to flower properly and the bees are moving from the Phlomis russelliana in front of it



The central flower on each stem is always flat and bifurcated


The surrounding blooms on the same stem are always rounded and conical

 

The pinks, purples and reds continue around the front garden (very little of them in the back garden )


The dracunculus purple flowers have finished but the stems look effective


This Clematis has emerged 20ft up in the Laburnum








Amongst the burgeoning grasses on the front verge


Where some of the white is still hanging on


And the lower grasses tend to look windswept even when there's no wind




Not all the yellows have finished as these are just starting

 

@Michael Hewett It's called fasciation and is one of the interesting things that makes the Veronicastrum attractive. Cutting that out will make no difference.

Normally the fasciation of the growing tip of a plant causes it to produce many other growing tips lower down. So if you continually remove the fasciation you may lose some of the other flowers.

When they grow in a circle, as in Veronicastrum, it's called ring fasciation. This can be caused by a variety of things including viral or bacterium. On this, and some other plants, it has been specially bred to persist.

The fasciated growing tip looks as though more than one tip has fused together. The multi heads produced are good as they provide more nectar for the bees.