I can’t believe that it’s the first of July tomorrow and that the school holidays have started already. This past month has been a whirlwind of activities for the girls from sporting events to our local Beltane festival fun. The month has been busy in the flower patch too with lots of new plants flowering for the first time.
June started with Gardening Scotland in Edinburgh. I had a lovely day taking my flowers along to this and helping to put together our Flowers from the Farm Stand. Flowers from the Farm is a network of British flower growers who work together and have been an invaluable support to me since I started Cloudberry Flowers. I hope you enjoyed Gardening Scotland if you went along at the beginning of June.
Flowers from the Cloudberry flower garden off to Gardening Scotland
Our Flowers from the Farm stand under construction with lots of lovely flowers grown all over Scotland.
This month I have loved watching all the new flowers blooming. Here are some of my favourites that I have grown for the first time this year.
Aster snowball                       Astrantia
Allium graceful                        Feverfew
Sweet william             Eryngium
Allium schubertii                            Campanula
Peony ‘Monsieur Jules Elie’     Allium
Purple cornflowers                      Orlaya
Omphalodes linifolia                    Jacobs ladder
Centaurea                               Peony ‘Mothers Choice’
Milk thistle                                       Antirrhinum
June meant a welcome return to the first gorgeous sweet peas of the year. They are still just coming in a couple at a time, but give them a few weeks and they will be flowering in abundance just in time for the summer weddings.
Outside on the flower patch June is a time for weeding a lot! It is also time to make sure all the stakes and netting are in as the flowers get taller and need support from the wind and rain battering them. I can see how much the patch has grown over the last year as I just had to put in a new order for more stakes and netting.
I have also planted my dahlias out now the frost risk has passed. Much to my surprise I have actually had a few blooming already. Like last year they are being nibbled so I am trying nematodes for the slugs and upturned pots with dried grass to catch the earwigs.
I have had a lot of black flies on my achillea this year which I have tried spraying with dilute washing up liquid and even just the hose to get them off. I think it might have worked as I haven’t seen nearly as many this week.
Inside I am concentrating on next years flowers by sewing biennials. These grow into seedlings that put down roots and leaves this year, hopefully overwinter well and flower next May. I can never have enough of these as they help fill the May gap between the end of the spring bulbs and the summer annuals starting.
Biennial seedlings just germinated.
This month I have started to receive more orders for bouquets, buttonholes and large jam jar posies which I have really enjoyed doing. Here are some of my favourites.
It was also British Flowers Week in June which is a celebration of flowers grown across Britain. I celebrated by leaving some lonely bouquets to find around different places in Peebles. Lonely bouquets are flowers that are left for people to find and if you do you can take them home and enjoy them. I had a wee helper to find some hiding places with me!
Also this month I have been making more real petal confetti. I make this using rose petals, lavender, cornflowers and any other petals that I think will work well. The conservatory is a good place to dry the petals as it is the one room in the house that gets nice and warm. I then transfer them to the airing cupboard to finish drying them. The towels have to come out of it at this time of year! Last year I started by making boxes of confetti which are great if you want to take one to a wedding to throw over the bride and groom. Sometimes you need confetti in larger volumes too, for example to fill a flower girl basket or decorate tables so I have started to make up 1 litre bags to sell too.
Next month is an exciting one with wedding flowers each week of July. Each wedding is different and I am really looking forward to doing the flowers for them . One of them I am especially looking forward to, as I get to be a guest! My cousin is getting married and my three daughters are very excited to be flower girls. It should be a great day with lots of Ceilidh dancing to finish with!