Thursday 23 June 2011

Mellow Yellow


Except for daffodils in the spring - the yellow part of the colour spectrum doesn't get much of a look in in my garden, there is something just a little too glaring about it, it doesn't seem to blend well with other plants.  Then, thinking about it a little more, and wandering around with the camera, I noticed that in the front garden I have quite a few yellow plants.  Writing this blog has made me really look at what plants I have, everyday I notice something different - see the garden with different eyes. 

The picture above is Hypericum calycinum or Aaron's Beard, Rose of Sharon.  In the 70's you could find this plant in most gardens - plants go in and out of fashion.  You don't see it around much these days.  It is an evergreen or semi-evergreen dwarf shrub that makes good ground cover and has large, bright yellow flowers from mid-summer to mid-autumn and dark green leaves.  Mine has grown to about three feet and is covered in flowers at the moment.  I get the shears to it after flowering to help keep it within bounds and off it goes again.  No trouble at all.

Planted next to it by pure chance, rather than design is Lysimachia punctata or Garden Loosestrife.  This is a clump-forming perennial that in summer produces spikes of bright yellow flowers above mid-green leaves.  This is also a trouble-free plant that has a long flowering period and grows to about two feet.

Elsewhere in the garden I have Anthemis tinctoria (E.C. Buxton) which is just in bud, this is a clump-forming perennial with a mass of daisy-like, lemon yellow flower heads borne singly on slim stems.  If you cut back hard after flowering you will promote a good rosette of crinkled leaves for winter.

So, as to my first statement, that I don't go for much yellow in the garden - I have proved myself wrong.  It was just that I hadn't noticed them.

6 comments:

  1. I really like it. Very pretty and soft.
    Cher Sunray Gardens

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  2. Lovely yellows...

    (I know how easy it is to 'forget' a colour and I'm glad it's not just me; I recently said how much I hated pink, and didn't really have any - and I have loads.)

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  3. I have found the same: blogging about your garden makes you look more closely at it.

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  4. I like yellow, and white, flowers, it's mostly blue ones that I have a problem with! Flighty xx

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  5. Love that Lysmachia, I have it too. It does well in dampish places where other things won't grow.

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  6. Welcome to blotanical. I like the loosestrife, and I grew it when I lived in Virginia, the mid-Atlantic area of the US. I had a pink variety. The garden centers had to stop selling it in that area because it was considered invasive there, but mine never was an aggressive, invasive grower. You have a nice blog.

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