Chenies in July

[charlie]

Had a quick whiz around the gardens while we were there
Kitchen garden was quite colorful, shame my camera decided to focus on the globe artichokes and not the scarecrow!

003 by charliepridham, on Flickr
Massed Argeranthemums (spell?) in pots and in the borders, must be quite an operation to grow them and keep protected until safe to plant out

004 by charliepridham, on Flickr
Borders showing no sign of heat and drought

005 by charliepridham, on Flickr

006 by charliepridham, on Flickr
The Telekia in the background is a plant I do quite well with for big leaves here on my dry ground, my mum however refers to it as "Charlies revenge" as her soil is wet and it really spreads

007 by charliepridham, on Flickr
If you like roses (I do) then there were some nice ones, although I much prefer using them more informally

008 by charliepridham, on Flickr

009 by charliepridham, on Flickr
Not normally a huge fan of grasses but this caught my eye

010 by charliepridham, on Flickr
The stand out plant for me was this golden smoke bush, I have and often see planted the purple leaved form but rarely see a good specimen of the gold form

001 by charliepridham, on Flickr

011 by charliepridham, on Flickr
The gardens are very impressive but almost make you go weak at the knees with the thought of actually doing the work involved, especially as I know she beds out 10's of thousands of Tulips every year

[AndyC]

Borders showing no sign of heat and drought

The grass is a lot greener than mine, I guess the sprinkler must be in regular use. Their Hemerocallis are looking good as are mine, they seem to like this heat.

[flounder]

I used to have a plain old cotinus I'd started from seed, it grew to tree like proportions. I don't know about being called smoke bush, mine was more of a smog with that insipid yellow. It could be why I've gone off them recently