Garden Bloggers Bloom Day ~ July 2016

Lily 'Honeymoon' shining under blue skies with the blue larkspar

Welcome to Havenwood! Our one-acre garden in Pennsylvania zone 5 is bursting with all the high summer favorites for July. It has been a beautiful summer around here! It has been unusually dry, but it is hard to complain as the temperatures in the 80s everyday make it perfect for pool going with the kids. :) I need to get out and do a bit more watering, but this is surely one of the most pleasant jobs in the garden.

Other jobs for this month include: 

• Cutting back all of the spring and early summer perennials, most of them to the ground in order to encourage a rebloom in late summer
• Knocking hordes of japanese beetles into garden trugs that are filled with a couple inches of water plus some dish soap. This has worked better than any other method so far, as the top of the trug is wide enough when placed beneath the bush or tree to still catch them as they drop. They are able to defoliage a bush in one day at this point in the summer! But soon they will descend to the depths to wait again for their attack next year. 
• Bagging any disease infected plant material that starts to show up with the heat and humidity, such as coneflowers with Aster's yellow, rose leaves with black spot, berries with grey mold, mallows with rust, etc. An once of prevention in good sanitation is worth, and better, than many bottles of chemicals to try to cover up problems later on. See my poor coneflower here
• Weeding! Always. Do it now, as it makes later easier. Every weed out means preventing the hundred that its seeds would create!
• Harvesting veg and fruit from the kitchen garden.... chamomile, lemon verbena, kale, black currents, peas, garlic, onions, potatoes, with tomatoes just coming into season now!  
• More wood chips onto the Woodland path. 

Lilies in the Rose Garden

Hemerocallis... that we have named 'Betty' in memory of our elderly neighbor, and huge garden supporter!

Salvia sclarea filling out the Rose garden.

Epipactus helleborine in the Woodland

Lilium regale with feather reed grass, Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster' in the Rose garden.

Coreopsis 'Red Chiffon' with blue Agastache

Thistles that we let go to flower in the back garden are the love of all the bees

Double Lily Elodie also in the Rose garden.

Thanks for taking a walk around!
I hope you are having an enjoyable summer!
~Julie

For daily updates on what is going on around Havenwood,
check in with WMGardener at Instagram. :) 

See more at MayDreams for GBBD