Purple Patch

Clematis

My garden is entering its Purple Patch.  The first flowers each year are white and yellows (snowdrops, daffodils and forsythia ...); then the reds appear (tulips, primulas, flowering raspsberry and japonica); now the purple blooms are opening.

Clematis

The purple Aquilegia is EVERYWHERE!  I will have to do something about that once the flowers have died.  I really like the look of it all over the place but when I vistied Doddington  Hall this week and saw the way their Aquilegia was controlled I realised mine could look better.

Blue Geranium

Here is another plant I need to cut back.  Anyone need any blue geranium?  Free to a good home!  I moved one small clump to the kitchen border a few years ago - it obviously liked the location!

Petunia

Cornflower

I love the delicate structure of this perennial cornflower.  Last year I scattered some cornflower seeds in one of the borders and got a magnificent display.  A number of seedlings have appeared in different parts of the garden this year - another welcome invader!

Pansy

One of my favourites at the moment is Verbascum Phoeniceum.  A 99p packet of seeds last year has turned into beautiful tall spikes.

Verbascum

Aubretia

I haven't included the Lilac as it is just turning, or the Lavender or the Ceanothus or the purple Lupins .......

JUST FOR FUN

A Purple Patch is a period of notable success.  Queen Elizabeth I is supposed to have used the phrase first.  How many of these quotations do you recognise?

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple

with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.

 Answer

He's lost his colour very far from here,

Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,

And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race,

And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.
 Answer

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.

 Answer

Their scaly armour's Tyrian hue

Thro' richest purple to the view
Betray'd a golden gleam.

 Answer