I recently replanted the Dahlias at the music school. I lifted them last November and stored the tubers indoors in an unheated room. What to do with Dahlias over winter is debatable. They may survive in the ground, then again they may get cold and damp and rot. Take them indoors and they may get too dry and shrivel up.

 These were on the dry side when I looked at them about a month ago so in the interim I put them in large pots of soil in the greenhouse and kept them well watered. This seemed to do the trick, they plumped up nicely and were starting to sprout.

 When lifting it's important to label which clumps are which because there's no way to tell from the tubers. Dahlias generally look best planted in groups of the same flower and foliage rather than mixing them up.

 Clumps can be divided before planting but it's vital to make sure each division has an 'eye'. A tuber without an eye will not produce a stem. I simply cut several clumps in half with a very sharp knife. I dug  the planting holes in advance and filled them with well rotted compost mixed with top soil to make a rich mix and gave the ground a good soaking after planting. 

 Probably Common Comfrey (Symphytum officinale) going by the bluish flowers. This clump is growing next to the stand of Russian Comfrey I mentioned a few days ago. As noted Russian and Common Comfrey cross pollinate freely so it's moot whether they are one or the other or a bit of both.

 Each flower of an Ox-Eye Daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) is many i.e. composite. At the centre is the multitude of yellow flowers (disc floret) and the surrounding petals are flowers too (ray floret).

 

 Happy to say a colony of Echium wildprettii is becoming established in South London- in the vicinity of my front garden. Known as the 'The Tower of Jewels' the species hails from the Canary Islands. They made their way to this spot via a seedling given to me by one of the gardeners at the South London Botanical Institute. 

 Giant Echiums are triennial and that specimen flowered in 2020 shedding copious seed; its progeny have been appearing over the past few years. Every 'jewel' is a flower and the tower pulsates with bees...

 

 Hawthorn, sometimes called The May Tree. Much planted in field hedgerows of old but will grow from a shrub to a fully fledged tree left to its own devices. I read an interesting comment that it is the only plant in the UK to be named after the month it flowers. That seems surprising but I'm struggling to think of another? Hawthorn is rich in lore and legend as befits a species that can live up to 400 years. 

 

 A stand of (probably) Russian Comfrey judging by its pinkish/port wine flowers though that ID is notional. Symphytum x uplandicum is a hybrid of S. officinale and S. asperum widely naturalised having been introduced to the UK as a crop for fodder, fertiliser etc. It cross pollinates with native S. officinale so interbreeding is infinitely mutable courtesy of bumblebees. 

Greater Stichwort

Red Campion

Star of Bethlehem