{"id":56153,"date":"2014-06-16T11:01:15","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T15:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=56153"},"modified":"2017-06-26T16:10:58","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T20:10:58","slug":"bloom-day-june-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=56153","title":{"rendered":"Bloom Day June 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bloom Day on Father’s Day? Really? I figured this out about 7 o’clock last night, but by then I was too sun-blasted to muster a post. Marty wanted his day spent at a local Irish fair. Guinness and “trad” music for him, Irish wolfhounds and sheep herding displays for me. Running late, on to my experiments with herbaceous stuff for a dryish zone 10 Southern California garden. A counter-intuitive direction in the land of palms, agapanthus, and bougainvillea but for now my idea of summer.<\/p>\n

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June brought the agastaches. Dark blue in the background is Lavandula multifida.<\/p>\n

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Agastache ‘Blue Blazes’ planted last fall 2013<\/p>\n

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So now the blue spikes of Plectranthus neochilus have been joined by agastache to make quite an unplanned wash of blue in the corner under the Acacia baileyana ‘Purpurea.’<\/p>\n

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No complaint from me. A corner of blue isn’t a bad thing on a warm day. The lavender and catmint ‘Walker’s Low’ is here too.<\/p>\n

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Self-sown nicotiana with the plectranthus, leaves of Echium simplex in the foreground.<\/p>\n

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Agastache ‘Blue Fortune’ is a pale, milky blue. Maybe a little insipid compared to some of the darker blues like Agastache ‘Purple Haze,’ which I neglected to photograph. But BF has an admirable chunky structure and wonderful leaves. Umbels of Baltic parsley in the lower right.<\/p>\n

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Cenolophium denudatum, the Baltic parsley, was started from seed a couple years ago. I think it would be happier in a wetter garden. Stays green and lush but not many flowers.
\nMaybe I should try it in soups.<\/p>\n

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I lifted and split the enormous clump of the grass Chloris virgata and started with smaller divisions last fall. It thickens up fast and does self-sow so no danger in losing it.<\/p>\n

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In a small garden, a large pot of cosmos makes for a summer full of daisies. This one has a faint halo of yellow. Cosmos ‘Yellow Garden’<\/p>\n

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Pot of cosmos in the background. Gomphrena ‘Fireworks’ and digiplexis. There’s some white cleome in here too I didn’t photograph. For animating a dry summer garden with just two kinds of plants, it’d be hard to beat this gomphrena with grasses. <\/p>\n

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Purple orach on the left. <\/p>\n

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Seedheads of purple orach, Atriplex hortensis. Wish it did more than very lightly self-sow. The edible orach would no doubt be happier in the rich, moist soil of a vegetable garden. I once grew a fantastic chartreuse form too but couldn’t get it to reseed. The lower leaves are fed to the parakeets.<\/p>\n

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The best umbellifer I’ve found for dry zone 10 is Crithmum maritimum.<\/p>\n

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I love the crithmum growing among Eryngium planum<\/p>\n

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Dalea purpurea’s first year has been very impressive.<\/p>\n

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Tiny blooms on the grass-like Anthericum saundersiae ‘Variegata’ which thrives in the morning sun\/afternoon shade in very dry soil under the tetrapanax with bromeliads and aeoniums.<\/p>\n

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The kangaroo paws don’t seem as tall this year. Not long-lived anyway, the lack of winter rain may have contributed to smaller size. (‘Yellow Gem’) More fern-leaf lavender, with Gaillardia ‘Oranges & Lemons’ in the background.<\/p>\n

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My garden is really too small for big clumps of rudbeckias, too dry for heleniums. Gaillardias are just right. This one is sunshine on stems.<\/p>\n

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Out of three pots of lilies, only the white returned in spring, supported here by the trunk of Euphorbia lambii.<\/p>\n

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Pelargonium echinatum has started a new flush of bloom in the mild June weather.<\/p>\n

Catch up with other June gardens at May Dreams Gardens<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/big><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bloom Day on Father’s Day? Really? I figured this out about 7 o’clock last night, but by then I was too sun-blasted to muster a post. Marty wanted his day spent at a local Irish fair. Guinness and “trad” music … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[63],"tags":[1509,3597,3595,270,1612,86,2824,125,2914,734,369,3167,2758,2409,493,128],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paNJ2E-eBH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56153"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56153"}],"version-history":[{"count":119,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78413,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56153\/revisions\/78413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}