Nature's blessings

Thanks for sharing your scented flowering garden, I can smell those sweet peas and Golden Showers from here. Warsaw Nike is maybe the name you are looking for for your lovely clematis.

Like your fav sweet pea too Julie,unusual lupin,do you like blues? looking round I dont seem to have any now Delphiniums are over.

Nice shots, Julie - what's the variety of Sea Holly, looks wonderfully dark?

your clematis could be polish spirit,i got one of that name last year in aldis but it hasnt flowered yet but i think it will be a similar colour if i remember

Scotsgran you are right about the "Polish" name - Warsaw Nike!! Thanks for the reminder as it's dark again when I got home :-)

Poppylinda - I love blues, greens, purples, yellows cream and white. More pink colours than I planned for but for a change I've put my colour obsession to one side as any flowers this year are better than none!

Bamboo the Sea Holly looks dark but it's just plain old Eryngium Alpinum. It didn't flower in the first year but this year it's done a sterling job and I've been coveting Eryngium Jade Frost that I saw on another GOYer's site so definitely going to invest :-)

Thanks for mentioning your blog. I haven't been on much lately, so have missed a lot. Your garden plants are amazing. Isn't it wonderful that there's so much colour around in this awful season we're having.

I'm not criticising you, but your fuchsia looks like Heidi Ann ... a lovely hardy variety. Delta's Sarah is blue and white. Maybe it was wrongly labelled. I often find that happens.
Mine hasn't flowered this year yet (I'm saying 'yet' in the hope it will do so lol)

I love your sweet peas. I bought a pack of the same ones but they all died. That's never happened before. I'm blaming the weather :o(

I believe Viola and Pansy are the same. 'Viola' is the Latin name for them.
And while we're on the subject, since you mentioned their flowers looking alike - Sweet Peas and Lupins belong to the same family - Leguminosae :o)

I like your front door display. I like the pots :o)
And I wonder if that Clematis is Polish Spirit. I believe there is one called that.

What a long comment ... I'll shut up now lol :D

Thanks for your kind comments but really my garden is just raised beds and tubs and there is a lot of work to be done before I'm happy with it. But enjoying learning and making mistakes more than sitting in the garden! Hywel you are so right about that Fuchsia!! Checked back against photo from catalogue and it's definitely not sarah's delta, which is a shame in one way because I much prefer SD (probably mentioned this before but I've got a bit of a colour obsession thing going on and generally reject having pink, red or orange in the garden!) I also got disappointed when I ordered some Tulip "Spring Green" which turned out to be a rather striking orange and green colour - I think it was Andy Jeavons who ID'd it as the Tulip "Artist". The mail order company did give me a £10 voucher to say sorry but what really boiled me, and still does, is that they kept on having offers for this tulip all through the year yet told me they had run out of stock (I'd simply wanted a replacement, not a voucher). Suffice to say I've ordered a rather nice peony from them with my voucher and that wil be the last business they get from me! Despite my vitriolic rants about "the wrong plants" (very Wallace and Gromit!) I'm starting to mellow to different colour options. As the Stones song goes "You can't always get what what you want. But you might just get what you need. Oh yeah!"

Lovely blog, lovely photos, Julie. I envy you your lupins not only for their beautiful colours but for the fact that you can grow them. I've given up as they always succumb to the dreaded SAS. The Japanese Anemone is a favourite, but mine are not yet in flower. As regards colour, I think we mellow as we get older. I used not to be fond of reds and oranges but have lots of them now.

Not sure what "SAS" is?? LOL I'm def going to grow these lupin from seed again next year as I bought lupin plants and all of them seemed to rot away :-) At £1.49 for 30 seeds sunrise lupins are on my favourites now!

SAS, hmm - slugs and snails?

Julie your lupins should last for several years they are HP (herbaceous perennials). Just cut them down when they finish flowering and they should flower again next year and be bigger and better plants.

Yes indeed, Bamboo. Got it in one!

Ah right! SAS! Like it :-) SG - will try to get the Lupins to come back next year but these ones are described as hardy annual in the seed catalogue and didn't have to do anything more complicated than push seeds in the soil so I'm thinking of doing a bit of a trial (a la Pippa Greenwood :-) by leaving some in situ, taking some seed from this year's flowers and buying some fresh. Perhaps this time next year I can post my findings :-)