Ornithogalum magnum... and studying for the RHS!

Ornithogalum magnum

Ornithogalum magnum is a new flower bulb to me. I decided to try some from John Scheepers after seeing a similar variety at Phipps Conservatory for their Spring Show 2011.

Gardening in Pennsylvania ~ GBBD June 2013

Our Shade Path Garden full of yellow perennial foxgloves, Digitalis grandiflora.

Welcome to Pennsylvania for Garden Blogger Bloom Day!
There are lots of flowers to see this weekend around our small, town garden. Come take a walk around...

Pink Rose and Purple Clematis Combination for June

In our Driveway garden, an old pink rose bush makes a wonderful host for purple Clematis 'Etoile Violette'.

June is underway and the roses are blooming here in Pennsylvania. Our Driveway Garden is covered in pink and blue this week, with a bit of white thrown in to lighten the color palette.

When we bought our home, we inherited an old rose bush by the back corner of our house... and one to match it across the driveway. It blooms its socks off once and year, and then needs quite a bit of pruning to keep it in line. A newer rose would give more for repeat bloom, but the light fragrance and pink color make it worth keeping. And even better yet is the combination that happens when Clematis 'Etoile Violette' blooms along with it. The clematis it is planted at the roses feet and it appreciates the cool shade the rose provides. It easily grabs a hold on to the rose brambles and pulls itself to the sun.

Around the perimeter of this rose, which is 5 feet high and 6 feet wide (1.6 m x 2m), there is ground cover of variegated deadnettle (Lamium maculatum), evergreen moss phlox (Phlox subulata), and yellow-blooming Sedum 'Acre'.

Yellow foxgloves in the Shade Path Garden

Digitalis grandiflora and Clematis 'William Kennett' in our garden this week.

Along the Shade Path garden this week, the perennial yellow foxgloves (Digitalis grandiflora) are in bloom. They are a favorite every year, and seed themselves happily around our dry shade garden.  After they have bloomed for about a month, I trim back their spent blooms to the first set of leaves. This deadheading helps them to re-bloom again in September, which is a real treat!

The Shade Path succession planting started out in January with snowdrops and a few Hellebores in February. It was a really cold spring, so things did not really get going until the Iris reticulata 'Katherine Hodgkin' covered the path in April, followed by many more Hellebores orientalis. Then, the shade garden was covered in blue and white for May. Oh, and there was quite a display of pink columbine in there too.