May flower bouquets

Now here’s a burst of colour.

You might spot something different in my May bouquets this year. The velvety crimson penstemons.

I grew them from seed two years ago and they have just come into flower.

Some planted in the raised beds in the potager, others in the more open raised beds, and some in the shade of the bank above the potting shed. I just had no idea what they prefer.

Turns out they are fine in all locations and I’m thrilled they flower so well.

You can just see the buds here among the Munstead Wood deep crimson rose and the foliage of bronze fennel and lunaria.

I planned to do some on their own with just ferns.

And then shoved in more roses and finished with tall bullrush reeds at the last moment. It feels fun to mix the pink and crimson. Very Christian Lacroix.

(I had to cut back some ferns growing out of the potager wall and decided not to waste them.

This one was another fern fest. Stephanie just loves purple. So she got the very last of the Hesperis matrona before it expired.

I’m going to post more of the roses in a separate photo essay. But here are the last of the gladiolus byzantina for another year.

The alliums are back from a planting two years ago. I do so love the miracle of a returning allium in our dry almost sandy soil.

Early in the month I was able to combine them with the gladdies and the phlomis that hadn’t yet flowered. (Yellow phlomis are not my favourite. I much prefer the mauve. Even if it suffers in the cold.)

And here is yesterday’s selection for town. Mauve phlomis, alliums and bullrush reeds.

Such restraint.

Sweet peas daily.

And how about this for a delicate display?

Rats, you can see the paint brush marks on my new bit of up cycled furniture.

I bought a bookcase from our local ressourcerie last week and drenched it in Graphite grey from the left over Annie Sloan chalk paint which I used on the courtyard rill.

And here is the small backing board I added to try and give the flowers a bit more contrast.

I could have been daring and just painted the wall behind the shelves. But this is a temporary solution for now.

If I had to sum up the selection of flowers this lovely May it would have to be this.

Harvested but not yet bunched.

Exuberance.