Thanking Carol at May Dreams Gardens for the opportunity to share blooms, I’m joining in with a few of my own June picks and pics! May was a wet month in my garden–17 inches wet–and many of my plants have enjoyed foliage growth, but are lagging behind in flower production.
Additionally, this week of June 15–21 is Pollinator Week, which is promoted by Pollinator Partnership, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to the advocation and protection of pollinators. Pollinators of all sorts–bees, butterflies, moths, bats and birds–are required for much of our food production and are vital to a healthy ecosystem. Of course home gardeners know this and those of us who honor blooms are keenly aware of the synchronicity of those blooms and their pollinators.
This Horsefly-like Carpenter Bee, Xylocopa tabaniformis, is a common visitor to my gardens.
Here, she contentedly works the bloom of a Engelmann or Cutleaf Daisy, Engelmannia peristenia. Most of the blooms in my gardens attract something in the pollinator category–whether I get it in photo form, or not.
Heartleaf Skullcap, Scutellaria ovata, a great friend to the above bee species, maintains its grey-blue garden invasion, though it’s past its blooming peak for this year.
It combines well with other blooming perennials, including Turk’s Cap, Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii.
Turk’s Cap has grown tall and the foliage is lush. The flowers are finally appearing in great numbers–tardy for this long-flowering native shrub.
I’m so glad it’s blooming and I’m sure the hummingbirds are too.
Coral Honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens, are gracing the garden with a second flush of tubular beauty on this hardy vine.
With lots of rose action for this June Bloom Day, the Knock-Out rose delivers its usual stellar standards of bloom quality.
Subtler blooms open on the old Jackson and Perkins pretty-in-pink, Simplicity rose.
There are two Simplicity shrubs remaining from the seven planted before I moved into this house in 1985. Tough and beautiful roses, I thank the former owners for their choice. While I’ve never observed native bees at either of these two rose plants, honeybees, butterflies, and moths are frequent visitors.
Continuing the pink parade are the blooms of the Red Yucca, Hesperaloe parviflora, flower stalks, which are not red at all,
… and Rock Rose, Pavonia lasiopetala,
… and Winecup, Callirhoe involucrata,
…and Four O’Clocks, Mirabilis jalapa,
…and the pink-to-my eyes, Purple Coneflower, Echinacea purpurea.
Coneflowers are convivial and play nicely with everyone in the garden. They are constantly friended by a variety of butterflies, like this skipper.
…and make good garden buddies to many other plants, like lavender.
I wish I could remember the name of the lavender variety. It’s a wise gardener who keeps plant labels. Alas, I’m not always a wise gardener and sometimes lose my labels to the jumble of my supply and equipment shelves–or to the compost pile. The lavender variety that grows in my garden accepts the twists-n-turns of Central Texas’ extremes of drought-n-flood.
Shaking up the pink and adding some orange crush to the garden is the unknown passalong variety of daylily blooms that are now unfurling their glory each morning.
Welcome to summer!
What gorgeous flowers do you have in the garden this June? Please share and then pop over to May Dreams Gardens for a look at blooms from around the world. And if you don’t have flowers that attract a variety of pollinators, check out your local nursery and purchase some plants or seeds–herbicide and pesticide free–to give pollinators a place to thrive.
My Gardener Says... 
Beautiful. I love what you’ve done here with these photos. Like, the contrast between the glow-in-the-dark quality of the knockout against the vintage tea cup pink of the Simplicity rose. The colours of the red yucca blooms look gentle against the grey twistleaf (?) yucca in the background. You really have a painter’s eye. Turk’s cap has to be the hardest flower to capture. Photos never quite look like the real thing but I think you might have managed it here. happy sigh
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Awe, thanks Deb!! Those Knock-out do sorta glow in the dark, don’t they? And that Simplicity rose–they’ve been such tough plants and for so many years. I have to purposely walk to where they’re situated, because they’re on the back side of my garage–and they should be front and center. Of course, I don’t have the sun for them to work front and center, so I guess they’re fine where they are. 🙂
The yucca is the Y. recurvifolia, Soft-leaf Yucca. It does have a gray tone to it and they tend to do well in my clayey soil.
You’re right about TC flowers–they’re often look orange or washed out in photos. It was a good shot–thanks for the compliment!
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Purple coneflower is certainly a wonderful flower for pollinators, and goldfinches too. Sadly I don’t grow them anymore because of aster yellows. Love the Heartleaf Skullcap and the Rock Rose. I have the Coral Honeysuckle but it isn’t blooming yet.
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I leave the seeds on so our lesser and house finches can enjoy. Did your asters yellows take over?
I imagine your Coral will be blooming up soon–ours usually takes a break in our heat and dry of summer, but this year, the wet continues!
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Sadly the aster yellows meant the end of purple coneflower in my garden. At some point in the future I may try them again. The good news is it didn’t spread to other species.
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I guess I should have Googled first before I asked the question. I was assuming plant rather than plant disease. Eeeek! That disease sounds awful and I’m so sorry that you lost the coneflowers. The aster yellow is spread by leaf hoppers, I certainly have plenty of those, but not on my cones.
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Wow, you have some gorgeous June blooms. I have never seen the Hesperaloe before, it’ s amazing.
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Thanks, Chloris. I can imagine that the Hesperaloe isn’t often seen in the UK, though you might look at Kew. I remember seeing some Lantana (a common native Texas plant that grows out of cracks in rocks) there and I laughed: silly botanists, why would you have a weed in this glorious botanical garden.
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Lovely post Tina, I have a couple of boxes full of plant labels and I still can’t remember names!
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Ha ha! I was attempting some bit of order with my labels, but the bucket dropped, the labels spilled, and, well….nevermind!
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I can never keep track of my plant labels either….and oh my look at the beautiful natives and roses. Yes the pollinators are happy right now. I especially love Scutellaria ovata…what a beautiful plant in leaf and delicate flower. We have had 12 inches of rain so far in June and we are to get more and more so we are getting some flooding here but lots more in the southern part of the State that is now in a state of emergency…seems the extremes in weather are still coming everywhere.
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Isn’t the Scutellaria a gorgeous perennial/groundcover? Some Texas gardeners don’t like it because it can be aggressive, but it’s easy to control and is beautiful in foliage and bloom–that works for me.
Gosh, you’re flooding too? We’re back in the rain business too. A tropical storm is in the Gulf and the rain bands have started. Very tropical–sunshine one minute, a dark sky and deluge of rain in the next! While this pattern isn’t all that abnormal for us, it’s been a very long time since we’ve experienced sort of summer. Stay dry and safe!
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Beautiful pictures – I particularly love your comment about Echinacea ‘playing nicely’ with the others – because it does just that, doesn’t it? Also the comment about the lantana at Kew! The drifts in the Temperate House (permanent plantings) are the pride of the gardeners there and it’s frequently used as bedding in the UK. Weeds in one place, treasures in another …
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Thanks, Cathy! Coneflowers just go with everything–if they don’t take over. 🙂
It’s been a long time since I visited Kew (sniff–I want to go back!), but I just remember thinking, “Why would anyone think lantana is special?” Of course I now realize just what a great plant it is. But I do like your last comment!
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SO many lovely blossoms to consider. I’m a fan of those Simplicity roses – the colors are so soft and lovely – they absolutely invite closer inspection. And your coneflowers…they are gorgeous at every stage I think, from early bud all the way to spent seed head. As I was first learning what all the fuss about “deer resistance” was about, I’d planted a coneflower out front, it bloomed, I swooned, and the first night after the flower opened Bambi came by and neatly nipped it off at the stem. That was one of the first but certainly not the last time I harbored murderous thoughts about the deer… Now I keep coneflowers (and other favored deer nibbles) safely behind the fence!
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Ha ha! There’s always venison, you know…darned deer. I’m glad you can pop some coneflowers where the deer can’t reach and eat.
The Simplicity are lovely. There were originally (7?) planted, in a neat hedge along the side of the garage. There are only 2 remaining, but I don’t forget them: they’re gorgeous, smell lovely and make nice cut flowers, though I don’t cut-n-vase all that often.
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Beautiful pics! It’s funny about the plant labels- I always lose the ones I need and find ones that are obvious buried in the soil when I don’t want them! It’s great to see the coral honeysuckle coming back for another bloom.
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Such beautiful pinks and reds and purples for your bloom day post! I can always count on your posts to present me with a new word to describe our plant friends. “Convivial”. I love it! — never would have thought to use it to describe flowers.
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Ha! I thought “convivial” was appropriate for coneflowers! And thanks, it’s been a lovely June in the garden.
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