It was only this spring that I learned that coleus is a member of the mint family — square stems, pointy leaf tips, spike of little flowers — but despite this fact you definitely should not eat it.
Blooming Coleus
Category: Annual Flowers
Pink Clover
As if to measure up to its scarlet cousin currently blooming ten feet away, this pink clover has popped up in another of our containers.
(I think this pink one is Trifolium pratense, while the scarlet is T. incarnatum, but that’s just a guess.)
Crimson Clover
I scattered a bunch of crimson clover seed a while ago as a nitrogen-fixing ground cover, but I wasn’t quite prepared for how pretty the flowers are.
Pollinator-Friendly Seeds
Thanks to our neighbor Anne who donated a pint of seeds harvested in her own garden last season from pollinator-friendly flowering plants: yarrow, coreopsis, echinacea, joe pye weed, black eyed susan, and sage.
These have been scattered into planters and tree beds throughout the garden and I expect to see some of them later this summer, with others remaining dormant and cropping up in subsequent years.
Thanks again, Anne!
Grandpa Ott
My favorite variety of morning glories continues to be the Bavarian “Grandpa Ott” with its deep purple blooms.
They do a great job of climbing the fence — or bamboo rods, or tall plants, or anything else they can find for support — and although their flowers don’t stay open for long, there are so many of them that they provide a constant stream of color for months throughout the late summer and into the fall.
Brilliant Cockscombs
Most of the flowers are gone from the garden, but the cockscombs (Celosia) are still vibrant.
Catnip Flowers
Much of the garden’s catnip is now in full flower.
All of this catnip stems from a single small flowerpot I brought home and placed on my windowsill a decade ago — it’s a prolific self-seeder, and has spread itself to multiple nearby containers and treebeds.
Strawflowers
The sidewalk planters we added this spring have provided some lovely additional space for these new strawflowers (Bracteantha) to catch the sun.
Sunflowers In Bloom
These wild-strain sunflowers top out at three feet tall, so they aren’t as impressive as the giant forms, but they’re lovely nonetheless, and later in the season the seeds should provide some good eating for the birbs.
Developing Sunflowers
This looks like it could be some kind of scary monster, but it’s just the growth tip of a flower emerging in one of my planters.
