Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day ~ October 2010

The latest arrival to the party is this quiet but graceful character above ~  a scutelleria or skullcap, although exactly which one I don't know. The first frost has still to arrive so there are still a number of hardy perennials in flower, although some of them are past their best. The hardy geraniums are still holding forth including 'Buxton's Blue','Salome',' Pink Penny' and 'Dilys' as well as ones whose names have long gone out with the bathwater.  Aconitums are flowering, a couple of astrantias are having a second flush, heucheras still froth and erysimum 'Bowles Mauve' continues to send out sporadic purple spikes. I am glad to say that erigeron mucronatus defies himself's spiteful attempts to erradicate it but dismayed to report that the dreaded 'Yellow Peril' defies my deliberate attempts to polish it off.

I have recently been making a deliberate attempt to introduce plants specifically for late colour so tempted last year by An Artist's Garden,  I have been delighted with rudbeckia fulgida var. dreamii. I have also been pleased with the similar but subtly different rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii "Goldsturm". Although I am not a big fan of orange or yellow flowers I think that I am slowly being converted.

Flowering for a long spell right up to the first frosts is fuchsia magellenica 'Alba' which despite the name has a delicately pale pink flush to its flowers. Sadly its much smaller hardy fuchsia companion 'Genii' has not shown any sign of flowering this year. I thought that the plant had been decimated by the harsh winter but slowly and surely it came back to life but it is foliage only. Oh well that must mean a bigger and better show next year! 

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day is kindly hosted each month by Carol over at May Dreams Gardens. Paper and a pen are compulsory when you visit as your wish list will grow and grow and grow .............. !