Welcome to the my first Monday vase of June!! As usual on a Monday I am linking up with the lovely Cathy at Rambling In The Garden to join in with her challenge to find something from the garden to put in a vase for the house every week of the year.
I have loved May for all the beauty in the countryside – lanes billowing with cow parsley and hedgerows laced with hawthorn blossom. In May the garden almost plays second fiddle to the beauty I find outside my gates, but in June the garden takes centre stage. Peonies, roses and foxgloves fill my borders and the Cutting Garden sees the first of my favourite hardy annuals. Today I took my snips to the Cutting Garden in the lovely early evening light and found the first of the peonies popping open in the warm sunshine of the last couple of days. Only a few are ready so I could not be picky about colour, but there were enough to fill a jug with the addition of a few nigella blooms and a handful of sweet peas.
Below you can see my first bloom of peony Coral Sunset. In the early spring I planted 3 Coral Charm and 3 Coral Sunset peonies not expecting any flowers this year. Two of the Coral Sunset peonies have produced one bloom each and I am so excited to see how these peonies perform in future years! The colour and form of this peony is stunning – I just want more of them so that I can fill a whole jug with just this sumptuous colour.
This is the first bloom of the Sarah Bernhardt peonies and there will be plenty more to come. Sarah Bernhardt is probably my favourite peony – large double flowers of palest pink that are beautifully scented and last well in a vase.
The sweet pea I have used today is from my greenhouse batch – the outdoor sweet peas are slow to get going this year – probably because of the cold night time temperatures. This sweet pea is from the Spring Sunshine range sold by Owls Acre Seeds – the colour is Champagne. This is new to me this year and will certainly be a permanent feature on my list in years to come. The colour is deceptive – it looks decided apricot on its own but appears more a delicate pink when put with pink flowers – a very amiable flower!
The blue nigella is from a self seeded batch that have been growing slowly through the winter. Nigella is just such a versatile flowers – I use it in arrangements as a bud, in flower and as a seed head and it looks stunning every way.
Finally for today I had to share this photo I took of Ruby. She was very interested in what I was doing with the flowers, but not so interested that she could bring herself to get up!
Things are hotting up now with the wedding I am preparing for in July, so with six weeks to go I have decided to introduce a weekly Wedding Wednesday post to encourage myself to practice my arrangements in preparation for a very busy few days of cutting and arranging on the week of the wedding. This weekend I was fortunate to arrange the flowers for a lovely friend’s 60th birthday celebrations and I will share these flowers with you on Wednesday. The party needed 6 bowls of flowers for the tables, which was great practice for the wedding where I will be making a mixture of flower bowls and oasis wreaths to surround hurricane lamps for the reception tables.
Also this week I am attending another inspirational day with Kim Beedie of Figa & Co at Glenham Hall, so I will be sharing the photos over the weekend. This time Kim is concentrating on roses and if anyone remembers my post about the Glemham Hall Garden in Winter you will know that I am very excited about seeing how that amazing rose garden will look this week!
I am looking forward to being back here on Wednesday and in the meantime please do pop over to Cathy’s blog to see what she and the others have made this week.
Another beautiful vase Julie and I am looking forward to seeing more on Wednesdays…it has cooled down and is going to get cool midweek….but just a brief respite!
Thank you Donna – it has been very hot here too (well hot for us!!) and I am relieved to see that the temperatures are dropping tomorrow. These hot days are not good for my early summer flowers – they just go over so quickly. I hope you are enjoying your brief respite.
A beautiful vase Julie. I’m very taken with that Sweet Pea, and the lovely coral colouring of your new Peony.
Thank you Jenny – the sweet peas are so beautiful in my greenhouse and that coral colour is my new favourite for peonies!!
Your peonies are delightful Julie. Coral Sunset is stunning. Wonderful it bloomed for you. I purchased a Coral Charm last spring that came with one flower bud, but it has not bloomed this year. Guess it wants more time to grow up. Enjoy your upcoming events.
Thank you Susie – I am sure you will have some blooms next year. Peonies are often slow to get going but are very reliable once they have settled in.
Coral Sunset is gorgeous! A must have I would say 🙂
Thank you Jessica – I would certainly recommend it – it is quite luminous in the garden.
Coral Sunset is gorrrrgeous! I adore those colours and have tulips and a rose in that pinky orange shade, but have never seen a peony that colour. My white peonies are flowering now and the garden smells delicious. 🙂
Thank you Cathy – I only discovered Coral Charm last year and Coral Sunset this spring but they are my current favourite peonies – I hope they mature quickly so that I can have lots of blooms to enjoy! All my peonies are popping this week – almost too quickly in the warm temperatures we have been enjoying – I am quite looking forward to a cooler period so that my favourite flowers will last a bit longer.
What a great combination of colours, Jenny!
Thank you Anca. xx
Lovely peonies Julie, I’ll enjoy reading your post on Wednesday, I’ve written a post about my cut flower garden today, you would be very welcome to join in if you have time to write a post.
Thank you Christina. I really enjoyed your cut flower post and will try to write a post myself and link in over the weekend – I seem to be chasing my tail a lot at the moment but I do want to keep up with my blogging!!
You just can’t go wrong colourwise with such beautiful blooms and this looks so fresh and summery. How long do your vases last, I wonder? I like the clear glass too it suits this arrangement to see the green too. Have a wonderful time at Glemham Hall.
Thank you Teresa. The length of time my vases last is very variable. If I pick the flowers just as they come into bloom and condition them well they will usually last at least 5 days and often 7 – the first peonies that I cut this year as almost popping buds lasted nearly 2 weeks. The vases I make on a Monday however are often made with what is looking best in the garden that day, so the flowers are already fully open. These are not as reliable – I have already removed a few flowers from my Monday vase, although I think the rest will last until the weekend.
That’s a most summery vase Julie. I must confess to having never grown a peony – an omission to remedy methinks. Do the ‘Spring Sunshine’ sweet peas have much scent? It sounds as if the next few weeks will be busy for you. Have fun 🙂
Thank you Anna – you must certainly add a peony or two to your garden!! The Winter Sunshine and Spring Sunshine sweet peas that I am growing in my greenhouse are certainly scented but not quite as much as the summer varieties.
What’s not to love! Absolutely beautiful arrangement.
Thank you John – I am glad that you enjoyed it!
It is wonderful to see the different peonies that are available – in the UK it is so often just Sarah B and the dark red one that are widely available so it is refreshing to see other varieties too. Your coral one looks perfect with this particular sweet pea – but you have puzzled me with the Spring Sunshine reference…is this another Owl’s Acre strain or did you mean winter Sunshine? Here I am fortunate that many of my outdoor sweet peas are beginning to flower too and I have never picked as many sweet pea posies! Enjoy your Glenham Hall event, and I look forward to seeing your Wedding Wednesdays!
I did mean Spring Sunshine Cathy – if you look at the Owls Acre website you will see that there is a strain called Spring Sunshine – also intended to be grown under cover. They all flowered at the same time for me, so I am not sure what the difference is but it widens the choice of colours available. I am so pleased that your winter sweet peas have been a success and I am jealous of your outdoor blooms – we had some very cold nights for an extended period here and it set my outdoor plants back – they are just getting going again so hopefully they will be flowering soon.