Flower Power

[Coco61]

Our London garden has suffered as well Beryl. My H is the main gardener with a weakness for plants and trees that need a warm climate and little frost. Many of his old and much loved plants have been killed by the repeats frosts. My input is a few flowers and I am watching an old fuschia with anxiety. We have had to cut about 75% of it down and some new shoots are growing but some then withered away.

The main point to post here though was to mention Californian poppies. A great favourite of mine. I harvest the seeds from plants each year to scatter a few the following April but the self seeding ones seem to do better! They are growing now but behind the usual timing. Once they flower the colour is a lovely deep orange so I will try and remember to post a photo here when they are out.

 

[elusive]

I think all our gardens have suffered with climate change although here over in the west the weather pattern has been quite different, last year was a real game changer & I’m dreading summer too but before that our summers have been getting progressively colder & wetter while winters got warmer & wetter! I think I had more flowers last November than I did for half the summer!

Anyway, here’s some of those California poppies Coco was talking about, they are beautiful & come in various colours but the orange are my favourite (no surprise there!)


These have a special place in my heart at the moment, red clover. Just before Meri died I had sown some sprouts for her & couldn’t bear to throw them out so I put them in a container in the garden close to where she now lies & the red clover is flowering like mad right now.
As usual when I try to photograph flowers it gets really windy so a bit blurry!

 

[Member ID2]

I'm looking forward to see photos of orange Californian poppies.

 

[Member ID2]

The red clover is stunning!
What a perfect plant to remember Meri by.

 

[Coco61]

I had no idea that Californian poppies came in other colours. Thank you elusive.
At the rate thing as are going, it will be a few weeks yet Beryl but the plant growth is good now.

 

[Member ID2]

There are definitely young starlings in this garden. I stock up their feeder with premium fat balls in the morning and by early afternoon they're gone. They also love those berry squares and peanut butter coconuts.

 

[Member ID2]

Btw, my OH took this photo not me.

 

[RainbowBrite]

Btw, my OH took this photo not me.

It is a beautiful photo!

 

[elusive]

Starlings started to fledge here too on Sunday, the noise is unbelievable as always!

 

[Frida]

Wonderful photo of the Starlings

 

[Member ID2]

Starlings started to fledge here too on Sunday, the noise is unbelievable as always!

Same here. They are such a quarrelsome lot!

 

[Member ID2]

Starlings argueing over the fat balls.

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[Member ID2]

The first rose this year.

 

[elusive]

Beautiful rose, I love yellow ones.

 

[elusive]

Another splash or two of colour here
Chives are looking nice now

And another orange favourite of mine, Geum “Tangerine dream”

 

[Member ID2]

Did you grow this beautiful flower from seeds? It's a gorgeous colour. I'm asking because i used to go to Tangerine Dream concerts back in the 70's. A Tangerine Dream flower would be a nice nostalgic gift for a friend.
I love chives to look at and to eat.

 

[elusive]

It is a lovely nostalgic name isn’t it! I haven’t had much luck growing geums from seed & I’m not sure I’ve seen seed for this specific variety so you would most likely need to buy a plant.

 

[Maz]

I don't even know what Geum's are . My chives aren't quite out yet. Further north. Although that was a week ago I last looked - maybe they are now - I will check out of the window.

Unfortunately the garden here got neglected one year during the Pandemic. I was just starting to get it in shape when it got completely decimated by rabbits the following year. Nothing has been the same since - they destroyed just about everything. Only the two or three shrubs and some bulbs survived. I replanted some plants and they got decimated by rabbits too.

The rabbit plague seems to have been managed now but since then I've not been able to do a lot of gardening due to knee problems. I'm quite happy with the few shrubs and bulbs though. I still need to get the plants from the garden centre put in, that I recently got - rather than leave them in tubs too long.

Quite a few plants don't survive well here anyway - wild weather here and very hard frosts in winter.

 

[elusive]

That’s a real shame about the rabbits, much as I love them they can be a real pest.
Glad the shrubs & bulbs have survived though & hopefully you’ll be able to get the new plants in before too long, I’m sure they’ll be fine for a while though.
My garden has got very neglected in recent years too for various reasons, nothings gone it’s just all exploded! I can’t even get to the bottom right now.
My chives have been under cover all winter so they had a good head start.

 

[Coco61]

Quite unexpectedly the current warm weather has brought on my patch of Californian poppies. The first one opened this morning and here it is in all its glory. Another flower head is right alongside and others nearby.
I will take another photo later this afternoon because this one was taken at about noon but the flowers close up again in the evening and open again the next day.