July is midsummer in the northern hemisphere and the time when gardeners can take a rest and sit back, relax and smell the roses (or even the sweet-peas)! Most of the spring flowers are over by now and it is the turn of the half-hardy perennials and the annuals to show off. So many flowers to choose from, so this is just a selection.
Great Dixter in summer
Clockwise from top right: Martagon Lily; hardy geranium, white cosmos, sweet-peas, water-lily; agapanthus; lavender, white pelargonium, helichrysum, delphinium
Earth laughs in flowers 
I have always loved sweet peas Jude as I grew them as a child (about the only thing I think I’ve ever grown successfully!). I loved looking at all your flower photos – they are all so pretty and Great Dixter looks like the quintessential English village! 🙂
Great Dixter is a gorgeous garden. There are several in that part of Kent / East Sussex, I was in heaven!
I’m choosing the lily Jude. These images belong in some magazine is all I can say.
I am off to visit my Mom in rural Canada for the next week or so . i likely won’t be commenting as much but I shall return. 🙂
Lilies are wonderful aren’t they? I’d like more, but at the moment I don’t have space for another pot! Enjoy your visit to your Mom, I’m sure you’ll find a few views to photograph for us en route 🙂
I hope so but I will say it is a lot of flat empty land. I will fine tune my search. 🙂
Staying with roses, I think, Jude, but I do have a big soft spot for sweet peas. We always had them on a trellis backdrop to Mam’s rose garden. And clematis, and… you know it’s a difficult question, don’t you? 🙂
Sweet-peas take me back to the 1950s when my dad grew them (and I did too!) as well as sweet-william. I think that must have been the start of my love of fragrant flowers. Oh, he also grew old-fashioned roses too, the ones with the deep musk perfume. I usually grow sweet-peas, but didn’t plant any for this summer. Maybe next year… 🙂
We used to have sweet william too, but I took against them. Not sure why! They didn’t seem to mind me 🙂
An essential in a cottage garden. They do seem to have fallen out of favour, but oh, the perfume!
I seem to remember that’s what I didn’t like 😦 I don’t like the smell of jasmine either. Is this sacrilege? How many Hail Mary’s do I have to say? 🙂
You don’t like Jasmine? Well, it can be overpowering. I suspect you like a light fragrance. Maybe citronella, a hint of rose. I’d be interested to know what perfume you wear.
Currently ‘La vie est belle’. But not often 🙂
I don’t know that one. A good philosophy for life though 🙂
And you?
I like the whiff of jasmine as I pass by, the same with honeysuckle though both can be a bit cloying. Like you I rarely wear perfume. Currently I have J’Adore and Channel No 5 open but my absolute favourite is Dune. All floral notes! I still have a bottle of Opium that my brother bought me for my 21st birthday! I used to just dab on cheap patchouli oil in those days!
Ah- I remember patchouli oil! Memories 🙂 🙂 Not sure what Dune smells like. I’ll have a whiff next time I pass through an airport and think of you. I don’t use perfume unless I’m ‘going out’ or meeting someone. One of life’s nice indulgences. I do love opening a new jar of coffee though. Cheap thrills 🙂
The sweet peas are beautiful
If only I could pass on the fragrance!
A fabulous collage, I wouldn’t have thought of picking a pelargonium but it’s beautiful. I went to Great Dixter back when Christopher Lloyd was still alive, he was pootling in the garden!
I’m quite a pelargonium freak Gilly. I love all the different colours and varieties. It must have been wonderful to see CL in the garden. It is a gorgeous space.
I love growing poppies. Each flower lasts for only a little while but they are such abundant bloomers and look lovely in my tall pewter vase.
Poppies are very pretty from the red field poppy to the more elaborate oriental ones. They look lovely in a meadow.
Here in the San Francisco area, it is extremely dry due to the fourth year of a drought. Anything green at this point, except weeds, is appreciated. Glad to see such beautiful flowers. 🙂
Happy to share them with you Patrick. Sorry to hear about your drought, that’s a long time! Do you have water rationing?
Yes we do. 25% indoor and 50% outdoor. But the only penalty if you don’t cut back is one pays a higher cost. Wealthy areas still have many green lawns and beautiful flowers.
Sweet peas this month, because they are simple, perfumed and my father grew them. That’s if I can’t have horse chestnut and laburnum! I love the building, and the collage-bouquet.
No Meg! You can’t have horse chestnut and laburnum! They have finished flowering long ago 😀
But sweet-peas it is. Interesting how many of us are reminded of childhood through this one flower.
But they haven’t finished flowering in my heart!
You and your heart – it must be FULL of flowers from springtime. You’re not back on Mt Tambourine in September are you?
Home in September. Home. Home.
😀
What a beautifully coloured bouquet you have given us Jude and I notice tucked in the top corner the everlasting daisy that brings back fond memories of the acres of them nodding in the wind in WA. As for perfume I am a lavender lady, love its sweet refreshing scent., and it reminds me of my Mam as she always wore lavender perfume.
Lavender is a lovely fresh scent. I like rubbing lavender through my fingers (and mint, and rosemary). It is supposed to relax you. You seem a very relaxed person 🙂
Yes a triumvirate of tranquil scents Jude.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzz…. 🙂
Ah, Dixter! Lovely place, time I went back….