The blue phase

I love seeing the changing colours of my garden through the spring months. When it first awakens there is so much yellow; daffodils, primroses, forsythia and the bright yellow/green of the first euphorbia flowers.

After a while when the daffodils and forsythia have finished and the bluebells start to flower there is a transition period between early and late spring where the predominant colour is blue. My clumps of bluebells are getting rather large and the foliage is swamping other plants a bit but then the more foliage, the more flowers! At the same time the aquilegias are coming into flower and the majority that I have here are a deep blue colour. The seed originally came from my mum's garden and I just chucked it about here and there - the best thing to do with aquilegias as they self seed (far too) easily and I'm always weeding them out. However they do have a deep tap root so unless I get them when they are very young it's too late!

The bearded irises have just started flowering and they are a beautiful pale blue colour. It's the only colour I have but I rather like keeping to the same colour as it is all the more stunning en masse.

The rosemary in the right foreground here has been flowering for months and is still awash with bees buzzing around it. There's still plenty of yellow/green from the later euphorbias and the golden marjoram is looking at its best, before hot sun comes and scorches its leaves. I find this marjoram is just as good grown in semi shade as it keeps this beautiful colour for longer. The marjoram is the low growing plant just to the left of the rosemary in the centre foreground.

The forget me nots that I grew last year are adding to the blue note - hopefully they will self seed and I won't need to sow them again. If they are anything like the love in a mist that I once sowed in this bed then they'll be a bit of a nuisance but easy enough to thin out - oh and not to mention the borage, which was rather a mistake outside of my veg patch as it really needs space!

Blue continues around the back of the house aided here by the beautiful flowers and foliage of bugle (Ajuga reptens) - that's the blue spires in the foreground above purple foliage. Another plant that takes over, this one not so much by self seeding but by creeping through everything, although the vast majority of plants in this shady moist bed are creeping or self seeding nightmares, and it's hard to get in here and weed. That window you see in the photo above this one is the downstairs bathroom and I often kneel on the inside windowsill weeding this bed from indoors!

This is along by my currant bushes and the veg patch fence. In the background are my purple aquilegias and catmint. Not to mention the little monster who eats catmint flowers! He was helping me this morning :-)

I did manage to get a decent photo before he came along and chewed the flower off!

The little tinker just snuck in! But I have literally tons of it so he can't do too much damage to any one plant so he's welcome, and he's getting on a bit and wobbly with a tumour on his spine, so he's even more spoilt than usual and gets away with murder.