I love this time of year when my garden changes from the dingy space it has been through the winter months to a delight for the senses with beautiful and fragrant flowers.
There are lots of flowering plants in my garden but there are a few that I particularly enjoy year after year. Today I thought I would share my 3 favourite garden flowers with you.
Buddleia
I have always loved the flowers of the Buddleia or ‘butterfly bush’, which can be a shrub or grow to tree size. I have an emotional connection to the Buddleia as both houses that my late maternal grandfather lived in had beautiful Buddleia trees in the garden and were always full of bees and butterflies! My husband and I now live in my grandfather’s most recent house and I love looking out into the garden at the purple flowers and thinking of him.
Peony
I think the peony in our front garden has to be my favourite in terms of drama! These gorgeous big blooms of raspberry appear every year and always make me smile. I believe these ones are of the bomb variety which has a single row of broad petals encircling a shorter dense collection of narrower petals. I love this pompom effect which really draws the eye. My sister brought me some peony bulbs back from her trip to Amsterdam recently and I can’t wait to plant them and enjoy more peonies next year!
Centaurea Montana
Although this is technically a weed in the garden I love looking at their funny looking petals and ombre purple colours. Centaurea is a genus of between 350 and 600 species of herbaceous thistle-like flowering plants in the family Asteraceae. They seem to be attractive to the bees and butterflies, along with the Buddleia, which is one of the reasons I love this plant! When people talk about garden flowers they tend to like the classically beautiful flowers with full petals but the strange purple spidery flowerheads make this one of my favourites.
What are your favourite garden flowers or flowering plants?
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