Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - June 2010

Welcome to Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day for June 2010.

It seems like June is a month when gardeners from all hardiness zones begin to have more plants blooming in common, though we sometimes grow those plants differently.

Who doesn’t have coneflowers, Echinacea purpurea, pictured above? (Thank you to the butterfly who decided to pose there for a picture.)

Hardy from zone 3 to 9, coneflowers are surely blooming by now in almost all gardens where they grow. These will continue to bloom from now until frost in my garden, attracting all kinds of bees and butterflies.

I suspect we’ll also see many colors and sizes of daylilies, Hemerocallis, today amongst the bloom day posts. Here in my garden, there are still ‘Stella D’Oro’ daylilies blooming, even though I thought I dug them all up and tossed them out earlier this spring. They are not easily gotten rid of it seems!

I also have the common ditch lilies, Hemerocallis fulva, blooming on the utility side of my house.

Sometimes I wonder why I have this little stand of ditch lilies. There are so many other daylilies that are nicer than these ol’ common ditch lilies, like this spider-type daylily, 'Longstocking' which started blooming over a week ago out in the vegetable garden.

The one advantage that the common ditch lilies have over other daylilies in my garden is that every time I walk by them, I’m reminded of summer drives to southern Indiana to see my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. So they get to stay.

Elsewhere in the garden, I have the rain lily, Zephyranthes sp., in common with other gardeners in warmer climates.

I grow mine in shallow containers and store them in my garage all winter. Grown this way, they seem to last for decades. They would never survive if I left them outside all winter here in Zone 5b.

I also have a new-to-me plumbago type flower in my front garden, Ceratostigma plumbaginoides.

It’s not exactly the Plumbago grown in southern gardens, which would have to be a one season container plant here, but it does add a nice touch of blue to the garden.

Another plant I have in common with southern gardeners is the Queen of the Night, Epiphyllum oxypetalum.

Mine bloomed Sunday night, which is close enough to bloom day for me to post another picture of it.

I keep mine inside year round, so its one or two blooms a year are special events. I know that where it is grown outside year round, it can be covered with blooms all opening at once. Wow, that would be something to see!

There is much more flowering in my garden in mid June, but I’ll save those blooms for another day and end with Kalimeris pinnatifida ‘Hortensis’, also known as the Oxford Orphanage Plant.

I read about this plant on the website, Human Flower Project, when Allen Bush wrote about getting it as a passalong plant from Elizabeth Lawrence.

It’s not as double as I thought it might be, and in this, its first full year in my garden, it is a bit straggly, having been moved earlier this spring with other favorite plants to the vegetable garden to wait out the construction of the new patio and cultivation of new flower borders.

But when I see it, I'm reminded that it was Elizabeth Lawrence who helped to inspire Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day with her quote - “We can have flowers nearly every month of the year" - and so it stays, too.

And today, it is again Lawrence who inspired me with her preface to The Little Bulbs to not only share about my blooms but also to compare them with how the same flowers might bloom in other gardens…

“It is not enough to grow plants; really to know them one must get to know how they grow elsewhere. To learn this it is necessary to create a correspondence with other gardeners, and to cultivate it as diligently as the garden itself. From putting together the experiences of gardeners in different places, a conception of plants begins to form. Gardening, reading about gardening, and writing about gardening are all one; no one can garden alone.”

What’s blooming in your garden on this beautiful mid-June day?

We'd love to have you share your blooms with us on the 15th of each month by joining us with your own Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day post. Just post on your blog about what is blooming this month in your garden and then come back here and leave a link to your blog post in the Mr. Linky widget below along with a brief comment to entice us to virtually visit your garden.

The rules for Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day are simple... no rules! You can include pictures, lists, no lists, common names, botanical names, whatever you’d like to do to showcase your blooms. You can post early, you can post late. We are grateful for whatever you share with us. Thank you, and all are welcome!