Compare with last year.

Flowering during the month

This is the Persicaria vacciniifolia planted last year that is flowering for the first time.

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Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii 'Goldsturm'

This was a very small plant in 2017, but now I've split it into two patches.

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This is supposed to be a Cyclamen hederifolium that I bought last year. To me it seems to have a different leaf to my other ones and it is flowering over a much longer period.

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This is Stokesia laevis 'Blue star'.

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Not sure what to think of this Astrantia major 'April love' as the flowers don't stand out much. It does flower over a very long period though.

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Anemone × hybrida 'Honorine Jobert'

Its taken a while to establish, but I fear it is about to take over all together soon. Plenty of flowers this year.

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Helianthus 'Capenoch Star'

It was sold as 'Loddon …

This Salvia 'Amistad' has grown very quickly. It is a tall variety with large flowers. It may not be hardy enough to survive the winter.

I was interested to learn that the silver leaved Brunnera often have offspring that are fairly similar. I tried to grow some seeds but no luck.

However this year I have found a few seedlings, I am keeping the ones with some silver markings. The colouring is not very consistent between different leaves and the silver effect is sometimes only partial. The plan is to keep the best ones and hopefully gradually get some nice looking plants. Don't know how fast they grow, not very fast so far.

They were close to the Brunnera macrophylla 'Silver heart' and Brunnera macrophylla 'Hadspen Cream' so it is is possible that they are a cross or just from one of them. I suppose the Brunnera macrophylla 'looking glass' is only a short bee flight away too.

This Geranium versicolor looked great in the photos when I got it as it does in the photo below, but never had much of a show from a distance. However this year it is looking a lot more impressive with many more flowers.

I had a go at growing a few Maris Piper potatoes this year.

They were just grown in old compost bags. I followed the widespread online advice about rolling down the bag and filling about a third with compost and planting in that. As the shoots grew I added more compost and rolled the bag back up until it was full. The idea being that this would cause the potatoes to form higher up the underground stem and a higher yield.

This seemed to be a complete waste of time. All the potatoes were at the bottom and I saw no potatoes growing higher up the stem.

I've now found a couple of articles on this subject. The first (Sue's ... potato trials) was very interesting as it suggested planting potatoes in different layers and this produced a higher yield in this simple trial. That makes sense to …

Compare with last year.

This is the one of the months where the garden is at its best, this time just one picture and a video with a quick tour.

Video

Another labeling fail - this was sold as H. 'Loddon gold' which has fully double flowers. This clearly is not that. I believe it to be Helianthus 'Capenoch Star' and I much prefer this than what it was supposed to be as I am not a big fan of double flowers. This has great big flowers, much more sunflower like that my H. 'Lemon queen'.

My other tall Alstroemeria has been a great success, whereas the low growing Alstroemeria has struggled to survive and is gradually being eaten off.

So I thought I would get this full sized one in red. I've planted it between two other red plants, which was unintentional and I'm not going to bluff it out with talk of 'the red border' or any such nonsense.

Its full name is is Alstroemeria Summer Red