July 2023 English Garden Tour (With Plant Names) 🌳

Hi there everyone, it's Jeanette here from Enthusiastic Gardener. I have done no gardening all week because here in Essex on the southeast coast of England, this is what the weather has been like. A little deadheading, that's about it, but I thought let's have a quick look around the July garden here in Essex on the southeast coast of England. I'm about 30 miles east, east of the city of London and 30 miles in the other direction is Southend-on-Sea, the wonderful seaside town. So come and have a look with me around the July garden today. Let's start over here in my new area which I planted up last week. The hydrogeraniums have picked up and bees are loving them as you can see over here, enjoying them and we haven't had the fountain on that much because it's been raining so much. That's a formium, brown sugar, scabiosa, gara, verbena bonariensis over the back which I'm hoping will grow up and look all beautiful and wispy. I still haven't got round to trimming the yew and here we have the apple tree which I moved which was just here and I've put it there. Seems to be doing okay. Sedum autumn joy just beginning to turn colour if you look closely. This is going to be my new area which I'm still deciding. Now I'd like your opinion please because I'm thinking and Richard is not keen on this idea but I'm wondering about another little chair. Now I know I have chairs everywhere. I have a chair here, I have a chair, the yellow chair over there. Do you really need more chairs? Especially since we have chairs right there but I like chairs dotted around and I think it will be a little focal feature, not a big chair. Anyway I'm still deciding why the stepping stones are here because I'm just testing out the idea. So if I turn around and pretend to sit I quite like this would be the view that I would get and it's just a space to contemplate just for five minutes with a cup of tea and if you look up I sat here the other night in this beautiful expanse of sky, watched the last birds just flying around before they went to bed. There were bats as well which was fun to watch. You always get bats around here at the end of the day just at dusk going around catching all their mosquitoes and things. So I'm thinking about that let me know what you think and the colour that I'm thinking is lime green but only a small one. Funnily enough when I went on my dog walk I always seem to find things. There was a one of those lovely wrought iron chairs and at the time I saw it and thought I don't need it. Someone had just left it there. It sounds like a big dumping ground where I live doesn't it? But I didn't pick it up and now I really regret it. There's my Trekkie Karpus. This is a full sun order and as you can see I have Hucares, I have a Chinese Plumbego, still haven't planted my Miss Ruby Buddleia or my Salvia. I'm just trying to figure out what to do here and I just want to point out this Clematis, very very pretty Clematis. It's called a Viticella and it's an Etoile of Wallet. And funnily enough I originally planted nine. I had nine Clematis. I had one on each of the trellis. There's five that side, there's four this side and Clematis and I don't seem to get along that well. We only have that one there and we have this one which is an early spring flowering one called Blue Ice and none of the others ever survived. This here in the back you can just about see it's a Honeysuckle and my gorgeous Trekkie Karpus Fortunii. It's done so well this this will be it's let me think now. Planted it in 21 so it's been here two years. There's a Salvia just up there, more Hucares, some sort of a Holly. Someone did tell me what that was called and I've forgotten still. A Euonymus. This beautiful one is a Rocky Mountain Blue Arrow Juniper next to another Salvia which is in the pot and I like that because when I stand further back or even sit in my lounge because it's raised and I can see it over these chairs so I see the colour so that's kind of serendipitous. It was a happy accident. This is an Andina and my Mahonia still loving my Petunia Pink Crispy which is not pink at the moment but that's what happens in the spring and I gave my rose its first prune down to five leaves everyone five leaves and it's beginning to create new buds now again so I'm thinking maybe next week we'll see some more flowers. Camysiporus. This is a Rose of Sharon and that will be pink flowers and I've deadheaded all the Geraniums so they're beginning to get new buds again. This is some sort of Lily here and it has a really really dark red even black flowers and I did trim my Petunia Red Robin. You may remember my friend Edie gave me this little smoke bush called Young Lady and I'm so pleased because it's put on all this bright green new growth so I'm obviously it must be happy. A little Hydrangea. The Lamium has spread really spread and it has beautiful little little purple flowers. I love the Lamium and it shines at night as well. I moved this little Acer Princess here that seems to be happy and as we look around to the Heucheras the middle one this one struggling a bit but we have some Pyrrhus here. This is my Red Rose which is beautiful and it's called it's a Ruby Wedding 40th anniversary that's been flowering non-stop now that's been in for two years so it does take a couple of years for things to establish and I must remember not to be so impatient. The Circus Canadensis Forest Pansy Redbud that's doing well and it has grown a lot and that's my wonderful Fatsia Japonica and this year I've left all the leaves to grow at the bottom which normally I do tend to take all the lower leaves off but I've just thought I'll leave that this time. This is another Camysiporus at the front here cloud pruned probably needs a little trim and we have a Phlox here just beginning to start flowering. Behind it is my David Austin James L Austin again that's had a trim or a prune so there are no flowers to show you at the moment and this rose here is the Olivia L Austin same again. The Pear Tree is doing well a little bit of an odd shape that's doing very well and then of course we have Shady Corner my wonderful Shady Corner with my new fountain. You can see I've moved the cat again the cat has now been moved to here because I felt like I had my three ball topiary here I felt like it's nice to have a bit of height so I just thought I'll try my cat there and I do actually like it in amongst all the crocosmia and I feel like now instead of having quite so many different bits dotted around this is now my kind of whimsical area so the only other bit of whimsy are the flamingos which you've seen by the other fountain. This hydrangea is a Vanilla Fraise it's I realize I do not have any success with hydrangeas I had three well I have mop heads they're okay they do well macrophyllias but these panicles or paniculatus I mean that is not very I mean it gives it a bit of color but it's not very happy so that's a shame that's my nine bark probably called the lady in red as I was happily told. The ferns are just exploding they're so happy here they're only in planters they're not in the ground so I have a line of four planters along there and it leads up to my garden illusion gate which I love and I've had so many questions about that it's from a company called primrose primrose.co.uk they do it in all different sizes shapes etc it just brightens up what would otherwise be a very boring corner makes it look as if it leads to a secret garden but of course it doesn't. These are the hostas in in my raised pots so that's another thing I cannot grow hostas because of the slugs and snails I know now which plants that I can have and as long as I stick to that the slugs and snails won't bother me I'm very pleased with my my row of euonymus now I planted these last spring so spring 2022 they were miniature little twigs because I had to take my boxwoods out I had a row of beautiful boxwoods which went down either side I had the at that time the path just came straight down to here and out this way but when I redesigned I did a little bit up to the chair and then a little bit up to there so they were tiny little plugs and quite inexpensive and I'm so pleased that in just over a year or 18 months they've done so well wonderful very happy with that the bluebush lobelia some of it I've had to pull out as you can see some of it it does struggle I don't think it looks beautiful when you first plant it or a couple of weeks later looks gorgeous all the way around but it's an effort an effort to keep it going it wants water all the time so we have a couple more hookahs dotted around everywhere this is my Ilex Crenata cloud pruned topiary we have some grasses that is a Atlanta spruce there which at one time I made into a spiral you can see the remains of the spiral but I'm just letting that grow out another seed of autumn joy that's a euonymus and we have a cherry tree up here which I've just trimmed quite drastically it was literally like that but not a nice shape so that's had a very radical haircut and we have a camysiporus here so the sweet potato vine lovely bright pop of colour this salvia here I've just trimmed both or a couple of my salvias because the blooms were fading and hoping that I will get some more and we have osteospermums over the back we have echinacea and some begonias dotted around and as we move to this section this is my Eremophila my emu bush I love the emu bush and we have the carex that I divided at the bottom here divided those this is another salvia as you can see the bees are loving the salvia a couple of heucheras my plum tree needs a trim which I'll do and these are the contrast pelargoniums which as you can see have really filled in and I'll show you from the other direction because they do look lovely we have some more geraniums or pelargoniums a little lemon cypress and over here now mum gave me this and she couldn't remember what it was called it's got yellow flowers that's another salvia I cut back and you can see it was so windy last weekend I have leaves everywhere I have a Nandina here and here I have some Veronicastrum just beginning to come into full glory and I moved this a year ago so last year it didn't do very well this year it's looking so much better so that's another reason why I need to have patience I think I expect too much over the back I didn't tell you over the back right there is one of my most favorites Picea pungens and this one here is another Picea pungens and that's called super blue seedling and we have some little pelargoniums in front of that this is some sort of a lily and I had beautiful beautiful white flowers which I've just cut off actually because they had reached their prime so I don't know if I'll have any more and I'm delighted with this little area here which I planted up a few weeks back with again the lamium and the lamium has spread so much I had to raise up my snout put him on a couple of bricks because you could only see him from about that it looked like the Loch Ness monster rather than a snout so I'm very pleased with that area had to move my tortoises out as well because they just got they got hidden now carnival corner which I used to call carnival corner when it had the bunting I do like this and it does really really spins around when it's windy and it does catch the light because this is the south here so the sun in the daytime comes I haven't even got around to planting this which I just haven't done it I haven't planted any of those pots either I have tidied up a little bit and you can see I've got climbing clematis there which is past its best it's not that happy there we had heating problems yesterday Richard changed the immersion heater we had water gushed out we had an inch of water no a centimetre of water all over the ground floor we were on our hands and knees with towels every towel from the airing cupboard got pulled out mopping up and it was hot water as well and then I had Lottie and Lucy trying to wade through so that was not fun here's a view from the other side the window box is looking nice you may remember I had dahlias dahlias here but I've moved them over to here they're right there foolishly I moved them because I forgot slugs and snails love crunchy stems of dahlias and they got my dahlias the reason I moved them as I say is because it was so hot here so I've replaced them with some beautiful begonias and begonias are wonderful because they can take shade and they can take sun and I think you can see there's white ones as well in amongst some sweet potato vine a beautiful little rose which is lovely and we have this climbing rose here called Santana again I've pruned that so hopefully we'll get some more roses from that and again another thing this is its maybe third year and this is the year it's doing well it's all doing well and it's looking so lovely because of all the rain that we had although I do need to do the weeding I hope you've enjoyed my garden tour in Essex as we head towards August already it's flying by so much for watching I'm Jeanette I'm The Enthusiastic Gardener have fun in your gardens and I will see you next week weather permitting