My North-East Facing Garden in June
Hi! I hope you’re well? Here’s an update on my north-east facing garden in June. Let’s see what’s flowering in this Yorkshire hillside garden in June. We’ve had a mini heatwave! It’s been a lovely few weeks of hot sunny days and nice cool nights and not a drop of rain. I had a quiet week of work and spent a lovely few days pottering in the garden and catching some rays (got to get that Vitamin D, right?!).
The lawn is basically dead. It looks like straw and feels just as scratchy! I felt like I was fighting a losing battle, spending an hour at a time on an evening watering it. Hopefully we’ll get some rain and it’ll come back to life (fingers crossed!).
The foxgloves have appeared in force! Unfortunately not as many white ones this year, with the majority being the digitalis purpurea, but I’m hopeful that next year the white ones will flower. As they’re biennial you never know which ones will come up. I don’t plan to let the digitalis purpurea set seed so will chop off the flower spikes when they’ve finished flowering. They’re so good for the bees!
We’ve got a LOT of aquilegias this year. The majority of them are self seeded and they’ve sprung up all over the garden. Again, as there are a lot of seedlings already I won’t let these set seed and will dead head them as they’re taking over a little bit.
Good news on the dahlia front – we have one! This is the only one that’s started flowering yet, but the rest have lots of bushy growth so I’m confident it won’t be long before we have more. Phew! I ordered dahlias from Sarah Raven and was really pleased with them.
I had a David Austin Wildeve in a pot we inherited from the previous owners of the house (thanks guys!). Unfortunately the Wildeve part of the graft died, but the rootstock put on some really good growth. A quick email to David Austin Roses and it turns out that this should form a climbing rose with white flowers – YASSS!!
The white hydrangea Mr R bought me for my birthday a year or so ago is doing well and is almost flowering. I bought a blue one for a pot by the door but wish I had got a white one instead.
The apples are growing nicely and this seems to be a bumper year for our two little trees, Red Devil and Discovery. We may have to do some thinning as I’m not sure the little trees can cope with so many apples.
The roses have finally started to bloom too! We’ve got a stunning Claire Austin over the archway, an Iceberg over another archway (which doesn’t seem to be a climber, more a shrub version. I think Mr R got a little confused when rose buying!) and a few others I’m not sure of. There’s a Rosa Mundi which I don’t especially like and needs removing.
My cutting patch is doing really well, with some ammi, cosmos, scabious and nigella. Picking from here has been lovely, and I’ve managed to have a vase of flowers nearly every week so far. Earlier on I needed to pad the vase out with more foliage but I’m so glad I decided to do this. Grown not flown is DEFINITELY the way forward!
My vase in the living room – not bad for a beginner! This little north-east facing garden in June is very floral!
I can definitely recommend starting a cutting patch, and if you want more posts about this north-east facing, sloping garden which is the most awkward space in the world to garden, why not read these posts:
