Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

I have wanted to participate in Bloom Day for a couple months now. I love seeing what is blooming in different areas. At the Estate and the other gardens I am in charge of there are literally hundreds of things blooming so I went for a few of the things that I had taken pictures of. I wanted to get this post up so I may try and add a few things later today.




What a wonderful year for Roses we had. There are a few still hanging on. This first one is a David Austin variety named ‘Heritage’. It has slowed down but I wanted to post it since I have so enjoyed it this year. I went into the rose garden on Friday just to see what was blooming and a couple of the varieties were still going strong.
‘Iceberg’: strong white bloomer.



  I featured this on another post. I can’t say enough well about this new rose. I highly recommend it. It had the most flowers of any rose in the garden right now.
‘Love and Peace’: This one combines two of my favorite roses. Still had a half dozen nice flowers as of this week.
  An oldie but it is still blooming very well in the heat.





Numerous shrub roses. This one is ‘Seafoam’. You can see it has started to mingle with my Korean Silver Fir. Very nice white and loaded with blooms.




This next one is a new plant for me, Monarda citriodora. It seems to have numerous synonyms including Lemon Bee Balm and Lemon Mint. It grew in a wildflower mix so I am not sure if it is an annual, perennial or biennial. Only time will tell that though I will encourage it to reseed. I think I like it better than the regular Bee Balm I have been growing. Although this year is the first year in many that the perennial species has not gotten Powdery Mildew.



My Gaillardia Oranges & Lemons has been blooming steady for weeks now. It is on the downward curve right now but still had flowers. It is the longest blooming of the Blanket Flowers that I have seen. Wonderful plant and I have been enjoying the various shades that the flowers come out on the individual plants. I want to see what it does after I cut it back.




There are hundreds of Coneflowers out now. I have been planting the various new ones as well as growing a lot from seed. Here is my favorite white. Echinacea purpurea 'White Lustre' has done well and I have enjoyed the contrast with the pink Coneflowers.



I love Zinnias but had given up growing them because of the numerous cultural problems. This is the second year that I have grown ‘Dreamland Red’ and have been pleased with its disease resistance and blooming capabilities. Red flowers seem to be really hard to capture with my digital equipment so I have taken to slightly underexposing them and then running them through Photoshop. I don’t have it down quite yet but this method seems to help. I wanted to share this with the Zinnia lovers out there as a good cultivar that doesn’t get too tall (10 inches) and is a prolific bloomer.



I haven’t quite seemed to figure out how to grow consistent Hydrangea macrophylla in Connecticut. This is a planting of about 18 plants that ring a driveway. I added the Boxwood for some structure during the winter. This planting blooms well maybe 6 out of 10 years and this year is an ‘on’ year. Rather than trying to turn them all blue I sprinkled some Aluminum sulfate randomly through the plants. It gives an interesting range of colors. My thoughts are that it is a combination of having a not too cold winter and not pruning the dead stalks off until well after bud break is the key to success.

Golden Bluebeard

Golden Bluebeard

I am not sure if you are suppose the cultivar name like they do in Massachusetts, ‘Woo-Ster’. This plant failed a couple of times for me until I found out it needs good drainage to survive. Since I have figured that out it has been happy in my garden. It needs sun to have the best foliage color, which is more chartreuse then golden. It often fades to a lime green later in the season and in more shady areas. Which I know to a lot of people who use gold foliage plants is an undesirable trait. Personally I don’t mind if a plant does that but I guess it could screw up someone’s design if it changed color. The flowers are a great hue of blue and are long lasting. They attract bees and butterflies in good numbers. The foliage is also aromatic and it has shown good deer resistance here in Connecticut and Westchester County in New York.



Another thing I have learned about this plant is not to cut it back too early in the spring. What appears to be dead will sometimes spring to life. You can treat it as cut back shrub or a semi-woody perennial if you want but I prefer just enough trimming to keep it neat. In USDA Zones 5 and 6 it can sometimes be burned down to the ground in a bad winter. Don’t despair, it is root hardy and should send up new shoots. Claude Palmer of St. John’s Nurseries discovered this cultivar in Worcester, England.

I am a big fan of the ‘regular’ Blue Mist shrub. It has grayish-green foliage and the same flower color. Some of the newer cultivars even have darker blue flowers. I usually sneak a couple of them into designs because they give color in the late summer.