Jon's Garden Photos

Our first entry in the Ninth Annual Infomaniac Garden Photo Event comes to us from Jon in London, England.
(Remember to click photos to enlarge!)
Take it away, Jon!

From this...

To this...

It's been an odd year for us gardeners, weather-wise. After the semi-tropical long, hot summer in 2018, we were lulled into a false sense of optimism by the early warm weather we had in February this year - we even had fuchsias and snapdragons in flower in what should have been the winter months, alongside the bulbs (daffs, tulips, anemones, cyclamen, crocus and aconites among them, together with a new acquisition Ipheion), pansies, primulas and wallflowers!

Spring: Clockwise from top left - Cyclamen coum, Eranthis hyemalis (Winter Aconite), Ipheion uniflorum (Spring Starflower), Tulipa 'Gavota'.

It wasn't to last, however. March saw gale-force winds and storms (that blew away our plastic greenhouse), April was wet and miserable right up until Easter when the sun shone, then May and June went (mostly) unseasonably cold again. Needless to say, that buggered up the chances of the carefully-nurtured seedlings we'd planted out in the hope of putting on some growth during the lead-up to what's laughingly known in the UK as "mid-summer"; they got a helluva shock, and several (especially the species ipomoeas and the cobaea) never fully recovered. We're used to the Gulf Stream effect, and instead at times it felt more like the Baltic. Regardless, our tough "old reliables" - the blue rose, scilla, mimulus, petunias, foxgloves, osteospermum, thalictrum, geraniums, aquilegia, hesperis, coreopsis and campanula (plus our new lilies and eucomis) - provided that summer colour we needed.

Early summer: Clockwise from top left - Thalictrum aquilegiifolium, Aquilegia chrysantha 'Yellow Queen', Digitalis purpurea (Foxglove) “Dalmatian Purple”, Rosa "Veilchenblau".

Mid-summer: Clockwise from top left - Campanula medium (Canterbury Bells) 'Deep Blue', Hemerocallis 'Crimson Pirate', Eucomis zambesiaca 'White Dwarf', Dahlia 'Bishop's Children mix' (unnamed) with Begonia × tuberhybrida 'Sangria'.

Late summer: Clockwise from top left - Fuchsia 'Lady Isobel Barnett', Salvia patens 'Patio Deep Blue', Fuchsia 'Blue Waves',
Salvia 'Amistad'.

Thankfully we did finally get a "proper summer" in July and August, and the extensive gardens were (and still are, to a degree) awash with colour - with the phlox, fuchsias, salvias, monarda, agastache, hollyhocks, begonias, thunbergia, verbena and dahlias commanding centre stage. And, of course, there's still a couple of months yet to go before any of them get frost-bitten, with any luck...

Roll on 2020!