Mellow Yellows

"The cure for anything is salt water:

sweat, tears, or the sea" - Isak Dinesen

Gironde Estuary at Barzan Plage -
where ancient Romans came for mud baths!

Whilst salt is a necessity for us humans, it's anathema to most plants. There are gaps in some of the sunflower fields near our house where water from the estuary has encroached in past years.

A mutant thumbing his nose at tourists..?

But on the whole sunflowers - or tournesols - do pretty well around here, providing a welcoming army of smiling faces for arriving tourists, as well as producing the excellent local sunflower oil.

Varieties seem to have shorter stems these days, so there's less wastage at harvest time; even so, these brown and black rustling plants give off great clouds of dust when they're finally cut down in October.

That, and the grape harvest, will be a signal that summer is truly over.

Courtyard seating areas

Meanwhile, we continue to enjoy hot sunny days followed by cool nights, which is the perfect recipe for a good night's sleep and helps to revive our sometimes flagging plants.

Despite high temperatures, we've taken the risk of planting out some of my newly-raised Sweet Williams (aka 'Sooty') so that they can fill the gaps left by larkspur and other annuals.

Lavender, Echinacea and Salvia
turkestanica alba - in full flourish

One can't help panicking when big spaces appear and there isn't an appropriate 'filler' to hand!

Cosmos is indispensible at this stage and luckily some of last year's seeds have begun to sprout in the borders. Given a bit of water, they are easily lifted and transplanted into new spots.

For insurance, I also sowed a small tray of Cosmos sulphurea, which came up straight away and will be ready to plant in ten days.

Crocosmia 'Emily McKenzie'
starting to emerge

After all the pinks and mauves of echinacea and lavender which dominated the first half of July, the hotter shades of late summer are beginning to take centre stage.

With rudbeckias and heleniums now in full flower, the colour of the moment is yellow - and various shades thereof - going through orange into red.

This is epitomised by the swordlike shafts of crocosmia which have gradually come into bloom, starting out rather snakelike (as here on the left) and finally throwing back their heads in a full-throated display of hot colour.

Emily cooling off in a sudden shower

We planted this vibrant crocosmia in our semi-shaded border, next to the dark leaves of Actaea simplex atropurpurea. Captured in a strong evening light, 'Emily McKenzie' glows almost scarlet against the backdrop of deep purple foliage. A really dramatic plant - smaller and more delicate than the popular 'Lucifer'.

Echinacea purpurea

Echinaceas are still a mainstay in the border, attaining a height of almost 2m - due in no small part to Christina's excellent watering system!

I love them in their emergent phase, as shown here; but once again their colours intensify as the flowers mature and they too look wonderful in the glow of late afternoon and evening.

We now have them in shades of pink, green and cream - any of which are useful for cutting.

Yellow Rudbeckia hirta, with white Shasta
Daisy, blue Scabious, orange Cosmos and
Helenium 'Sahin's Early Flowerer'

All the flowers shown here last for a week or more in water, with the exception of Cosmos sulphurea which tends to droop after a couple of days.

Lavender blooms are starting to go to seed, save for those we cut back in June which now have small young flowers. Instead we can pick a few stems of dark flowering salvia, like Salvia guarantiaca 'Black and Blue', which has finally got going after a slow start and provides bold contrast to all those orangey yellows.

Nicotiana 'Lime Green'
underplanted with lobelia 

Every year we promise ourselves to drastically reduce the number of pots we have to water... it seems such a waste of time and compost. But quite often we succumb to an impulse-buy of some colourful annual, only to find we have nothing to use for edging around a pot.

For me, lobelia has always been a perfect accessory, especially the Cambridge Blue trailing variety which is impossible to buy later in the season. So this year, I ordered seeds from Chiltern Seeds in the UK and started growing them in my trusty cold-frame back in April.

Being such tiny seeds, they tend to clump together and, when they finally came up, the threadlike seedlings were pretty impossible to prise apart without causing damage... yes, I should have mixed them with sand before sowing! Hence I had to prick them out and plant them up in clumps, which is not ideal for the development of their roots.

Lobelia erinus pendula 'Blue Fountain'

That said, most of the plants survived well and have been blooming away in three different containers; the green tobacco plant above was a spare seedling which we couldn't bear to throw away and it's turned into a handsome pot plant.

The lobelia itself seems to do best in semi shade where its blue flowers are two-toned and look lovely with grey leaved plants such as lavender. I'm hoping it will seed itself around the courtyard and provide us with easy-grow plants next year!

Verbascum nigrum

 Yellow natives

On a recent stroll around the site of a Roman amphitheatre which is being excavated locally, we walked through a meadow of lemon yellow mullein which was alive with buzzing insects. This is a shorter, more dainty version of the statuesque mullein, Verbascum densiflorum, which can reach to 4m on chalky banks and has grey-green foliage like the garden variety.

Tetragonolobus maritimus

In the same area of scrubby limestone soil, we came across these soft pillows of yellow vetch - a wild flower which goes by the surprising name of Dragon's-teeth, due to the long seed pods which eventually form.

It's a salt-tolerant plant and may well have existed there since Roman times when the supposed port of Novioregum would have been much closer to the shore.

An estuary vineyard, unfazed by salt-laden winds

Good Companions

"Collecting ripe seeds and growing plants from them

is one of the great joys for gardeners."

- Christopher Lloyd

Dianthus superbus and Stipa tenuissima

In hot summers it's vital to have some light and airy plants to give the impression of a draught wafting through your garden... even if it's only the mildest of breezes!

The popular Mexican grass, Stipa tenuissima, took hold in our courtyard some years ago and we liked it so much we've just let it flourish.

Dianthus superbus 'Superb Pink'
- from Chiltern Seeds

It seeds itself happily in the chalk base of our gravel courtyard and just needs a comb every once in a while to draw out the dead 'hairs' which tend to get matted after rainfall.

Then, voila, it looks like the finest of blond tresses after a rainwater rinse!

Now we've found a similarly tall, wavy companion flower called Dianthus superbus 'Superb Pink', which I grew from seed last year. It must have taken about twelve months to start flowering and patience was wearing thin as some of the grass-like specimens in our raised bed started to look very dry and frazzled.

Dianthus superbus and
Veronica spicata 

But, finally, it has rewarded us with a positive exuberance of flowers - delicate and fringed, ever so slightly scented and good for cutting. As light levels decrease in the evening, its finely cut petals glow beautifully against the dark shadow of our little garden house behind.

We also grew some of these in a shadier border under the ash tree and foliage has stayed a better, deeper green. The flowers are just as good, having come a little later but lasting for longer in the relative cool.

When my cousin came to stay recently we took her to one of our local beaches where there are carpets of wild pinks flourishing in sandy soil beneath the pine trees. She noticed that some had already formed ripe seed capsules, so we took a few just to see if we can grow them in the garden.

Wild pinks by the beach

I have to agree with Christopher Lloyd that raising your own plants from seed is hugely satisfying.

Pinks are amongst the easiest to grow, provided you use seed when it's fully dry and ripe, scattering it over sandy or gritty soil in a warm site. They need very little in the way of watering - in fact putting them into humid compost is probably the worst thing you can do for successful germination.

In England I was told that mixing a bit of brick rubble and mortar into your soil would make a good cuttings medium for pinks... Over here we just add some of the chalky bits that accumulate down our back lane.  Another way of using what Nature has so generously provided for free!

Scabious caucasica 'Fama Blue' with
Marbled White butterfly

Recent hot weather has encouraged lots of butterflies to visit the garden, especially when we've used the watering system and they can have a drink at the same time as collecting nectar.  It seems the large blooms on these scabious are popular with most winged insects and a single flower can host two or three visitors at the same time.

Tree poppy or Romneya coulteri

One of Christina's favourite plants, also grown from seed, is the flouncy tree poppy or Romneya. It sits well amongst a border of tall echinacea, coming into flower now.

The RHS classifies Romneya as a "suckering sub shrub" (not easy to say after a glass or two!) but gives it their seal of approval for the garden. It grows to about 2m, with tough but attractive grey-green foliage which enables the plant to thrive in hot climates and be fairly drought resistant. 

Romneya in full flounce

I find many types of poppy difficult to raise from seed because they don't like being pricked out from a tray to a pot and are better  grown in situ where they are to flower... which can be awkward in a small garden, with space at a premium and weeds liable to overtake seedlings at any moment.

So, Romneya is ideal in that respect: easily grown from seed and happy to be transferred from tray to pot.

Nerium oleander

Another Mediterranean-type plant which is popular here is the oleander.  It does particularly well in town gardens where it's more protected from frost and harsh winds and, so far, we've resisted the impulse to try and plant one on our own wind-battered site.

They are, however, sold quite cheaply in pots at the start of the season and do make a handsome container plant which doesn't need too much water.

We chose two different pink varieties and the paler one has come out well before the other for some reason.  No matter, they will provide a couple of nice punctuation marks on either side of the driveway.

Here you can see it next to the lavender border which is in its second summer.

The lavender plants have grown quite large and now need to be kept tightly trimmed... we experimented by cutting back every other plant just as it was about to flower.  

This had the effect of delaying flowering and it's noticeable that new blooms are smaller and shorter than the first growth, which is somewhat lax and inclined to flop over our black edging. For the sake of neatness and uniformity, we may decide to give them all a June-prune in future.

Cotinus coggigrya or Smoke Bush

Shrubs like smoke bush put on a huge amount of growth in midsummer and we suddenly noticed that ours is about 4m tall, with lots of dark leaves which almost burn with colour in the evening light.

Raised bed with Achillea 'Terracotta'
and Catanche caerulea in foreground

By contrast, our new raised bed falls into shade by late afternoon, so the pale blues and whites really stand out.

We looked for a long time to find the achillea called 'Terracotta' because its lovely apricot hue complements anything with a bit of mauve in it. Hence we planted it close to a small catanache, which is slightly lilac in tone, and to Veronica spicata which is a darker mauve.

Playing with colour gives you an almost Monet-like ability to turn your garden into a canvas, with constantly moving light providing some deft brushwork which can be caught on camera and creatively manipulated for hours in Photoshop. 

But, contrary to appearances, the following shot really hasn't been cloned!

Young storks in a freshly mown hay meadow