Flowers! Pretty Flowers!

Therese Bugnet Shrub Roses. My favorite shrub rose of all. It is the first of all roses to bloom in the spring and the last to go to sleep. The stems are red with very little thorns and the leaves are a medium green with red viens. The flowers are a lovely rich pink and are frilly and blowsy and beautifully scented. Very hardy. No need to baby them at all ...

At the very front the scalloped leaves with the clusters of fluorescent green flowers is Lady's Mantle.

When water falls on the leaves it looks like diamonds and is extremely beautiful and evocative. Immediately to the right close to the deck are a few astilbe (must have lots of moisture) and beyond that is a Bleeding Heart. The tallest shrubs in the photograph are Therese Bugnet shrub roses of varying ages. I have many of them as I love them so much. The tiny purple flowers near the center of the photograph are geraniums and behind them more astilbe. Kissing the grass is the white striped Lamium which spreads very quickly. Some people would say it is invasive. It does border on that and if you do not want to reign it in every year you definitely should not put it in your garden. Throughout the center are low growing Sweet Woodroffe so called because our ancestors used it to freshen their mattress' and bed linens. They are tiny white delicate flowers with a beautiful heady perfume and

the foliage is a rich green. 

Jolly Bee geraniums have lovely foliage and vibrant purple flowers - almost blue.

Single Hollyhocks in bloom.

Lavender Mist Meadow Rue in front and clematis behind it.

Bluebird Clematis and John Davis roses on arched trellis.