Seeing a good many Gatekeepers in the grounds of the music school at the moment. The time of their emergence is generally round about now. The woodland walk with brambles is ideal habitat for them resembling as it does a woodland ride. The Marjoram in the borders is one of their favoured sources of nectar.

 

Comma

 Brimstone

 One side of this meadow area at the music school is grassy with flowers, the other is flowery with grasses. I treat the grassy side like the hay meadows of old and cut it at some point after midsummer. The flowery side is mass of Knapweeds at the moment which I will leave till they go to seed.

 I would like to say I got the scythe out but I used the brush cutter, then the strimmer, then the lawnmower...

 

 The white form of Rosebay Willowherb. Never seen in the wild, at least not by me but I do see it planted in gardens from time to time. The pink is definitely invasive, the white less so (it is said).   

 

Rosebay Willowherb (Chamerion angustifolium), a common sight by railway lines.

 

Spring flowers gone to seed add another season of interest e.g. Honesty (Lunaria annua). 

 

High summer: tall grasses and tall wildflowers.

 

 I walked a couple of my favourite butterfly walks this week. A decent enough showing of common butterflies but not abundant. Hard to say whether we're having a good or bad year. 

 The dry, sunny spring into summer should have helped. Then again the parched conditions have restricted the growth of wildflowers i.e. food plants. On both these routes Brambles in flower were the main forage for pollinators.  

Mellow Mallow

 

Marbled White takes flight.

 

 Sunset on the longest day, the summer solstice, from the Weston Hills overlooking Baldock. The skies had been cloudy then cleared to reveal a fiery orb in a haze of grey and pink.

Self seeder: this single Musk Mallow in a sea of Munstead Lavender...

 The self-seeders in my front garden are always guerrilla gardening. I see Bloody Cransebill has made good its escape through the railings joining Michaelmas Daisy, Herb Robert and Red Valerian. Likewise Trailing Bellflower has trailed out into the world.

 Here is a wonderful though unintended juxtaposition. In the foreground is Viper's Bugloss (Echium vulgare) which grows wild in the UK. I grew one in my front garden a year or two back which self-seeded through the railings into the gaps and cracks in the pavement.

 In the background there are a couple of towering specimens of Echium wildpretti. The Giant Echiums -sometimes called Giant Viper's bugloss- are native to the Canary Islands and these two are self-seeded descendants of one I planted at the front five or six years ago.

 Two distinctly different though closely related species from the same family Boraginaceae have both prospered in the same way in the same urban location. Viper's Bugloss is invariably mentioned in lists of the five or ten best native plants to grow for bees and its giant relative would certainly make the non-native shortlist.

 The kitchen garden I made at the music school is well underway. All the herbs I planted in the square bed are flourishing and the Runner Beans are starting to run. The row of Munstead Lavender has settled in nicely. The Rosemary bushes I transplanted seem to be sulking a bit, hopefully they'll pick up. Plenty of Sage and Oregano which was there already. 

 

 Cutting the long grass in one of the meadow areas at the music school. The tall grasses going to seed are picturesque but on the verge of toppling into a thick mat and docks and brambles are starting to appear. A peasant of old would use a scythe but I am a latter day peasant so I got the brushcutter out.

 Most people worship the sun but gardeners pray for rain. In the past week my prayers have been answered. 

 Spring was a virtual drought in south-easterly England. February had been very wet so the dry March was not a problem, plenty of moisture in the soil. However there were no April showers to speak of; I actually got the hosepipes and sprinklers out later in the month. Watering in England in April??

 This continued into May and plants were starting to wilt with no rain and record heat. We had flaming June in May but fortunately May weather has arrived in June. Ah, damp cold days at last- glorious!

 

Hence the colour in the painter's palette: Cornflower blue.

 

 Giant Scabious (Cephalaria gigantea) attracts a multitude of pollinators: bumblebees, honeybees, solitary bees, hoverflies, butterflies and moths. 

 This Red Admiral was very interested in my potting table, or rather the splashes of water I made as I worked. It was a hot day and butterflies need to drink; note the long tongue supping...

Mellow yellow.

 

Love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena)

 

 Summer daze.

 

 Wild Clary (Salvia vebenaca) in the wildflower meadow at the music school. This is a seeded meadow (before my time) and I imagine it must have been a mix of generalists e.g. Ox-Eye Daisy and chalk specialists like the Clary.

 Curiously I have noted the absence of S. vebenaca in past years and considered trying to introduce it. And suddenly here it is! Then again the meadow is usually a mass of Ox-Eye Daisies yet they are sparse this year. Wild flowers are tenacious but highly variable in their growth from one year to the next. Weather is key: no doubt the warm dry spring has favoured some species, others less so.

 

 As mentioned recently I transformed a neglected former veg patch at the music school into a herb/kitchen garden. [see entry dated 16th. April] 

 This included transplanting a row of Rosemary bushes running East-West into an informal hedge/screen running North-South. Robust as it is Rosemary does not like root disturbance and is prone to 'transplant shock'. Nonetheless I decided to risk it: the key is to lift a large enough root ball of soil thereby minimising damage to the root system. 

 I wouldn't attempt it with knarly old specimens but these were only planted a couple of years ago (though they are already quite tall and woody). As a precaution I took 14 stem tip cuttings the day before I lifted them to propagate more plants if replacement is required. I got them going two to a pot; now they have started to develop tiny roots I carefully teased out each one to go into single pots to grow on. 

 Time will tell if the transplants prosper, if not I will replace them with new ones. In fact I might do that anyway. I have enough for a closer spacing and can prune them to be more hedge-like from the outset.

 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