August catch-up

During the long drought, when the garden dried up and seemed to come to a complete stop, there was little to do apart from watering the pots and tidying up. It was too dry to plant new plants or seeds to fill in the gaps. Fortunately, the drought was ended with a significant amount of rainfall, bringing on new growth, and the garden now looks full again. There has been a second flush of roses in flower, and the late-flowering plants are just coming into flower.

I removed my angelica in July, once it had set seed and started to look dead. I was planning to replace it with an ornamental grass, calamagrostis brachytricha, which I have growing in a pot. However, the grass was growing strongly and producing flowering stems which would have been damaged if I had tried to transplant it. I decided to wait until next spring, which is the best time to divide and plant grasses. As a temporary measure, I bought a tender deep red grass, pennisetum setaceum rubrum, to fill the gap. This will grow well until late autumn, but I have never had one survive the winter. You can see it here, in front of the tiger lilies.

Talking of lilies, I have had mixed results with the bulbs I planted for this year. The tiger lilies above flowered quite well, but the stems were bendy - possibly due to being too close to the angelica. I purchased these Scheherazade lilies from a plant fair at Wisley last year, and they have flowered very well in pots:

The pink lilium cerneum bulbs I planted in a bowl in February have completely failed. Three of them were eaten by slugs in spring, and the last one has shrivelled and died without flowering.

One casualty of the drought, in spite of my watering, was a white penstemon, which had always struggled and finally shrivelled away. I replaced it with a mathiasella bupleuroides "Green Dream" which I had seen at the Chelsea Flower Show. This has settled well, and is putting on new growth. Hopefully, I will have exotic green flowers next spring:

I'm very pleased with my fennel this year. In previous years, I have had plants eaten to death by slugs. This year, I have managed to plant larger plants which have grown very tall and flowered profusely. I bought three plants grown in hairy pots which allow the roots to grow through without having to disturb them. I think this has helped them settle, so the extra cost was worth it:

 Another casualty of slugs was my caryopteris clandonensis which I planted last year. I have replaced it with a rudbeckia hirta "Cherry Brandy" - an impulse buy from Polesdon Lacey. It is an annual, I think, so I will have to replace it next year. It has lovely deep red flowers: