July 2015 in the Northern Hemisphere

[johnw]

  Congratulations Giles. Sounds as if it's growing gang-busters.

john

[Gabriel B]

Leena, wonderful to see another northern (or I should say cold-winter) gardener. Finland's climate isn't too different from Minnesota, just a little warmer in winter and cooler in summer. I bet many plants that grow well here will do well there, and vice-versa.


Some July flowers from my garden in Minneapolis.

Here are cyclamen leaves shining with silver in the rain, and this year's crop of new leaves rising up, with their purple backs visible. You can see some seedlings too in the second photo, from last year's seed that escaped my attempts to collect it.





Several pictures of flowers with bees on them. I've been paying attention to the bees this year, especially in my native plant garden, and getting some good pictures with my little point-and-shoot camera. Appalachian bleeding-heart (Dicentra eximia) with a bumblebee. Bumblebees are the only bees strong enough to break into the flower and get nectar.



Mountain-mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum) is popular with all kinds of bees, from bumblebees to tiny sweat bees, and attracts many interesting wasps. The flowers are small enough to allow short-tongued insects to reach nectar, about the size of thyme flowers and spotted. The bee in the picture is either a carpenter or digger bee, but I'm not sure. I'm still learning.



Prairie-clover (Dalea purpurea) is also very popular. Here's a leafcutter bee collecting bright orange pollen on the hairy spot under her abdomen, and a tiny sweat bee with pollen on her back legs.

[ashley]

A fine series Gabriel
It's fascinating to see these different bee species.

[Hoy]

So you are growing Hurdalsrose, Leena? I had one once but it got too big!


Here's a rose that I have grown from Chadwell seed. Unfortunately I have no name for it - I thought it was R. banksiae normalis but it doesn't look like that.
It has just started flowering for the season. It has many, rather small flowers in a corymb-like truss and 7-9 leaflets.
Anybody who knows it?

[johnw]

Quite taken by this prostrate form of Lonicera villosa that friend Jamie in the Annapolis Valley collected in Newfoundland years ago, growing in his rock garden.  It has remained true to form while our native ones are waist high or better.  My phone-camera went dead so this the only photo of the day trip.

johnw  - +25c here today, far worse in the Valley.

[Gabriel B]

Trond, I can't identify your rose, but it reminds me of mockorange (Philadelphus), which was blooming recently in my backyard. Does it have fragrance as well?

[Hoy]

Trond, I can't identify your rose, but it reminds me of mockorange (Philadelphus), which was blooming recently in my backyard. Does it have fragrance as well?

My mockorange is also almost finished flowering but the rose has just started. And it has a very pleasant fragrance of rose

[Leena]

Leena, wonderful to see another northern gardener. Finland's climate isn't too different from Minnesota, just a little warmer in winter and cooler in summer. I bet many plants that grow well here will do well there, and vice-versa.

Yes, you are right, though our cooler and shorter summer may not be as good for many plants as your hot summer. Different Dicentras are also my favourites, which wrote earlier, and they like it here also.
You have nice bee-plants, and your cyclamen is wonderful.

So you are growing Hurdalsrose, Leena? I had one once but it got too big!

Yes, I like it a lot (I like big roses). I got it about ten years ago, and at first I tried to grow it in a different spot where it always died in the winter to the level where there was snow cover, so it never flowered, but then I moved it to a very sheltered and warm place under cherry trees, and here it is not about two meters tall and has flowered well every summer. 

[Maggi Young]

Quite taken by this prostrate form of Lonicera villosa that friend Jamie in the Annapolis Valley collected in Newfoundland years ago, growing in his rock garden.  It has remained true to form while ours are waist high or better.  My phone-camera went dead so this the only photo of the day trip.

johnw  - +25c here today, far worse in the Valley.

Not a plant I know at all - very neat thing.

[meanie]

First bloom on an Abutilon hybrid grown from seed sown in January..............

[Gabriel B]

Leena, since you like Dicentras, perhaps you will like my Adlumia fungosa. It's a biennial vine that has come up the last three or four years from seed.

It's messy, but beautiful if it has a shrub to climb up. It grew in our lilac bush (now dead) two years ago, and decorated it with garlands of ferny leaves and pink flowers. This year I've trained it to grow in the railing outside our front door, and in the chain-link fence in the backyard. A bit more work, but I don't mind because I love the plant.

[Edit:] Oops! The forum rotated one of my pictures the wrong way! I don't think I can fix it, because it looks right in the folder on my computer...  Happens at times - not to worry, Gabriel, I've fixed it for you. maggi

[Leena]

Leena, since you like Dicentras, perhaps you will like my Adlumia fungosa. It's a biennial vine that has come up the last three or four years from seed.

Yes, it looks lovely.  I haven't seen it, but it could grow also here. Most Dicentras do ok, but I've had trouble with some of the hybrids with D.peregrina in them, though it is most likely only a matter of me not finding the right place for them to grow. 'Ivory Hearts' was lovely, but it died in the first winter, when right next to it ordinary white Dicentra formosa thrives. I have  'King of Hearts' and 'Burning Hearts' growing in more dry bed, and they have survived.

[Irm]

Romneya coulteri is in flower here in my Berlin garden 

[Giles]

Magnolia chevalieri
A large evergreen plant, collected by the Wynn-Jones's (Crug Farm) in Vietnam.
A couple of mild winters in a row, and it is flowering for the first time.
Not entirely sure it was worth the wait....

[Darren]

Polemonium viscosum from Alplains seed sown early 2014. This is a single plant, now on its second flush of flowers. Only 15cm high. Don't be fooled by the background - it is in a pot!

The flowers have a lovely scent, reminiscent of Primula reidii. But brushing the foliage releases an aroma that can only be described as unpleasant. The literature suggests it is hard to get through a winter in cultivation in the UK. I'd agree with that. It germinated well, five seedlings made it to the end of last summer. 3 survived the winter, one of which I gave away in March. The two remaining plants look very healthy so far.