In a Vase on Monday: Blogging Friends

The variety of colours in the garden continues to increase as June progresses but the majority of blooms are still on the pastel spectrum, leaving nasturtium, geum and wallflower Cheiranthus allionii to pave the way for a flaming summer in a couple of months. Foregoing a mix and match of blooms I found myself thinking of Christina (My Hesperides Garden)’s delight in her white vase last week and her enjoyment of the weekly Monday vase meme; my vase today, therefore, is a tribute to her and all my other blogging friends for reasons that will become clear.

Many of the white blooms are, not surprisingly, in the blue & white border so it was easy to assess what might be available for my own white vase. The starting point was a sprig of Hydrangea petiolaris, a useful froth-like filler in the absence of ammi or similar umbellifer, with its creamy white to greenish yellow fertile flowers in the centre and its marginal ring of showy white sterile flowers. This was joined by Sweet Pea ‘Cathy’, grown from seeds gifted by blogging friend Anna of Green Tapestry, and sprigs of rambling rose ‘Snow Goose’ which is being trained against the wall here. I always think of blogging friend Pauline of Lead up the Garden Path when mine flowers as I first saw it on her blog and decided it was the right choice for this position.

Antirrhinum ‘Twinny White’, following its success last year, has been grown from seed again along with other colourways, but the white version has once more proved to be the better germinator; last year this flowered for weeks on end and hopefully it will do the same again and occupy more than just today’s vase in which it has a prominent place in the foreground. A white polemonium, growing surprisingly tall this year, is just coming into bloom and made the cut as well, along with white nigella and my favourite grassy fillers, Luzula nivea and Briza maxima – I was delighted to be able to send some of the latter, readily available as it happily seeds around, to blogging friend Sam of A Coastal Plot. Oh, and I nearly forget the Allium roseum, not strictly white but not pink enough to notice.

I often think of my dragon (Persicaria ‘Red Dragon’), offshoots of which have been sent to several bloggers in the UK and beyond, and of all the plants and seeds I myself have received from the generous garden blogging community. Many of us will look round our gardens and see plants that remind us of our blogging friends and that just adds to the joy of both blogging and gardening – so this vase is dedicated to Christina for her love of white blooms and to all my blogging friends for enhancing my life in so many different ways.

Mondays are certainly enhanced by your comments on this meme and for all the vases that you share when you leave links to and from this post – so bring them on!