Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - July 2011

Welcome to Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day for July 2011!

Here in my USDA hardiness zone 5b garden, the coneflowers, Echinacea purpurea, are creating a swath of bloom that will carry that section of the garden through the dog days of summer.

Echinacea purpurea is a good, sturdy, trustworthy, reliable flower, one that I think has been in my gardens wherever I’ve been for the past 25 years. It is almost like a backbone for the border it is in, the border called Ploppers’ Field.

Further along in that border, some unnamed variety of common tall phlox, Phlox paniculata, blooms with Heliopsis helianthoides ‘Loraine Sunshine’.

'Loraine Sunshine' is the variegated leaf form of the rather common false sunflower and though “she” self sows herself all over the the garden, producing progeny that revert back to the plain leaf form, I let her stay not for her flowers, but for her leaves.

 And I resign myself to pulling out the plain leaf form of false sunflower wherever it shows up.

There are salvias starting to rebloom in July, after blooming in May.

They would look so much nicer if the garden fairies would have dead headed them awhile ago.

There are also blooms starting to show up in the new border called August Dreams Garden, but I’m holding off on showing any of those until next month.

Out in the vegetable garden,  I would normally be picking green beans about now, but because I planted everything a full two weeks later than normal, I am still watching the blooms of green beans and just now noticing the tiniest bean starting to form.

 It won't be long now before I will have some green beans to eat.

A bonus of my late sowing is that sweet peas planted by the compost bin are just starting to bloom. In past years, I would have already pulled these plants and thrown them into the bins by mid-July.

There are more blooms in the garden – Rosa, Heuchera, Hosta, Hemorocallis, Hydrangea, Clematis, Cucurbita, Coreopsis, Lilium, Leucothemum, Zea – are some of the names I'd throw out at you if I was a botanical name dropper.

But it is July and it is either too hot to spend too much time in the garden or it is a lovely day like today when the garden calls us to come out and weed and water it and deadhead those salvias and think about garden clubs and garden visitors, and plants and passions.

What’s blooming in your garden under the full buck moon of July?

We would love to have you join in for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day and show us.

It’s easy to participate and all are invited!

Just post on your blog about what is blooming in your garden on the 15th of the month and leave a comment to tell us what you have waiting for us to see so we can pay you a virtual visit. Then put your name and the url to your bloom day post on the Mr. Linky widget below to make it easy to find you.

“We can have flowers nearly every month of the year.” ~ Elizabeth Lawrence