July: The monthly bloom
After a lot of hard work on the garden in spring, July is a month for taking a bit of time to enjoy the results and letting the miracle of nature do its thing, as more and more plants come into flower while others fade beautifully (such as the clematis seedheads in this arrangement).
For this month's arrangement, I ventured outside of my own garden to my Mum's where I collected sunflowers, heleniums, crocosmia, dahlias, knifophia (red hot pokers) clematis and peachy roses. I combined these with more dahlias, red pelargonium, peachy antirrhinum (snapdragon), heuchera flowers and foliage, pennisetum 'feathertop' and just a touch of blue from a few cornflowers, all from my own garden.
This arrangement has a very distinct colour palette, but of course in July there's an enormous range of colour. The vast majority of what's growing in my garden at the moment is actually on the cooler white to pinky-purple part of the spectrum, as shown in this bouquet I recently put together for a christening.
At this time of year it's almost easier to list what's not available than what is, but this is a selection of some of the blooms that are at their best right now.
