Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - May 2014

View as you come in the gate

May has turned up the heat (maximum 25ºC today) and today the focus will be on lavenders, roses and a new addition: pelargoniums.

The plants in this bed haven't quite filled out to hide the crack in the wall but there are white, red and peach-coloured roses blooming steadily and the red hibiscus is also in bloom. 

There is also some mock rose in the middle of this photo but you can't really see the blooms. They are pretty and sweet-smelling but the blooming period is so short! I wonder if there is anything I can do to change that. Would pruning the bush after the first blooms encourage more blooms, I wonder?

I love these roses! The blooms last a long time and when they open they look like this:

Gorgeous!

 I grew this rose bush from a cutting. I would love to know its correct name.

More yellow roses, also grown from a cutting.

These roses were bought as yellow but they turned this colour in their second year and I can't say that I am disappointed.

I have three different kinds of white roses. This one has a soft pink centre.

I just had to include these fragrant mauve blooms from the beginning of May.

These were blooming at the beginning of the month, too.

I have to confess that I started this garden without giving any thought to sustainability. I was silly enough to be persuaded to sow wall-to wall grass. Boy was that a mistake! Reclaiming soil for beds has resulted in back-breaking work over the last 8 years!

I started out with a vague plan to grow plants that we had in our Salisbury garden, hence the hibiscus and the roses. I can still see in my mind's eye the beautiful rose-beds they had in the Lord Malvern School gardens. Despite the roses' need for lots of water, I cannot give them up but I am now choosing new plants very carefully and finding it easier to resist buying on impulse anything that looks wonderful at the garden centre.

Santolina - now that's a wise choice for a garden in hardiness zone 10a.

Thank you for visiting my small garden. Do come back in June and pop over to May Dreams Gardens, the home of Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day!