July-August 2014: High Summer in Garden and Meadow: 1.Hot and Cool

Hemerocallis 'Dark Star' starts July, and our our daylily season, in earnest in the fenced garden (beyond David are the small yellow flowers of Hemerocallis 'Corky', which begins flowering around the same time.)  In the foreground, black-eyed, flagrantly magenta Geranium 'Anne Thomson' picks up and modulates the daylily's red tone-- on a much louder note.

Geranium 'Anne Thomson' is similar in ancestry and appearance to the better known G. 'Ann Folkard'-- magenta flowers flaunted against chartreuse young foliage for most of the summer, on weaving stems. G.'Ann Folkard' dies here in summer heat or winter cold, but we have grown G. 'Anne  Thomson' for many years.

More hot summer colors: the extraordinary deep claret of Knautia macedonica, paired in the entry courtyard with brilliant orange Asclepias tuberosa, butterflyweed.

Ascelpias tuberosa, planted originally in the meadow, has seeded itself around and is almost always welcome; here it is in the big island bed, cooled by nearby blues from nepetas and tradescantias.

Ascepias tuberosa with Verbascum chaixii 'Album'

Home grown chance hybrid coneflowers (hybrids between Echinacea purpurea and E. tennesseensis) began to bloom in June, but continue through July-- here with the orange of Asclepias tuberosa as a backdrop.

The warm apricot colors of Gladiolus 'Boone' are like nothing else in the garden. This glad is more or less hardy here, left in the ground over numerous winters. In our fenced garden voles pose a greater hazard than cold. Here it is flanked by Geranium 'Orkney Cherry' and Papaver rhoeas.

   

Delosperma 'Topaz' achieves its shimmering color by shading peachy yellow with a touch of magenta. We hope this new plant will winter in the gravel of the east garden steps.

 

Allium flavum 'Blue Leaf' (aka 'Glaucum') lights its yellow firecrackers under the pool terrace bench, which faces south and catches the sun.

   

The clear, soft lavendar blue flowers of Tradescantia subaspera 'LSS Lazy Blue' cool us through most of the summer. It is less of a thug than other tradescantias here. Those include self-sown apparent crosses between it and T. 'Concord Grape', which was pretty much sterile when it was our lone spiderwort.

Volunteer seedling crosses between Tradescantia subaspera and T. 'Concord Grape' have crowded out what we planted as a second group of T. subaspera 'LSS Lazy Blue'. The purples of the seedlings are more or less welcome in this part of the big island bed, backed by Clematis x durandii and the oddly chartreuse-toned early summer foliage of Cornus 'Midwinter Fire'. Late bracts of Euphorbia griffithii 'Fireglow' add sparks of orange, Malva alcea fastigiata a little of pink, and Verbascum chaixii 'Album' short spires of white.

A slightly later companion to those tradescantias is Euphorbia schillingii, typically spurge-chartreuse but atypically tall and late blooming. The tall. pale lavender spikes are Veronicastrum 'Lavendelturm'.

Euphorbia seguieriana var. niciciana is another summer-blooming spurge (this one for many weeks). Its chartreuse floral bracts cool neighboring colors (even, here, the red garage roof). It self sows freely, especially in gravel. Here it has crossed a path to establish outposts among short grasses and sedges in the meadow.

 

Euphorbia myrsinites bears chartreuse bracts in early spring, with blue-green foliage impersonating a big-leafed sedum for the rest of the season, even persisting through winter.  Here it softens the stone and gravel of our renovated west steps.

Stone replaced locust log steps through the meadow on the west side of the house this spring, and still look a little raw.

More cool glaucous foliage, from Hosta 'Blue Mouse Ears' in the partial shade of the fenced garden bench (with the yellow flowers of Sedum rupestre-- which also has glaucous, blue-green foliage.

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The blue-gray-green foliage of leadplant, Amorpha canescens is also coated, at least early in the season, with a whitish bloom. A drought tolerant legume, leadplant is one of the few plants to do well on the upper slopes of our meadow, increasingly impoverished by expanding tree roots from the woodland edge.

 

A close view of leadplant's purple flowers reveals their orange anthers; from farther off those add complexity or sparkle.

Iris season can never last long enough! This is Iris 'Currier McEwen', a hybrid between an Iris ensata cultivar (a Japanese iris) and the American blue flag, Iris versicolor; it helps to extend the season.