The Longest Day
21 June 2021
The longest day of the year is here. SeeHow Volume 1 has now been available to buy for just over 6 months. This has been a busy time for us, monitoring the growth of flowering plants wherever possible, to compare with SeeHow’s beautiful life-cycle illustrations. We have also been checking peoples’ gardens to see what is growing – thinking ahead about SeeHow Volume 2. Actually, it was really encouraging to see so many plants growing that are in SeeHow Volume 1!
Visualise your garden using SeeHow. 140 popular garden plants beautifully illustrated. A picture really is worth 1,000 words!
It is wonderful to see wild poppies everywhere. They survive in the most unprepossessing places – sometimes a solitary flower squeezing through an invisible crack at the back of a footpath. In other locations there are great drifts, glowing red even on a dull day and scattering their delicate petals like wedding confetti, that blow around in the wind.
This is the case on two allotments near ours that have not been cultivated this year. They have been quickly reclaimed by nature. Wildflowers are thriving and as a result, insects and butterflies are thriving too. Campanulas are also happy on unlikely ground, bringing their beautiful colours to cottage garden borders as well to wastelands. On my way to the allotment I pass several large bright blue clumps, growing from cracks between garden walls and pavement slabs. There are also drifts of these tall, elegant flowers in several nearby gardens, so probably the plants by the pavement are escapees that hopped over the wall. How nice to see nature thrive when left to its own devices.
On our new allotment we have a narrow flower border next to a tall fence, slowly filling with cottage garden plants, plus a few old favourites. Our foxglove is now in full bloom and the achilleas will follow shortly. There are marigolds too, grown from seeds. They are about 15cm tall. Hopefully, they will be in flower in a month or so. The nasturtiums at the back of the border are climbing the fence and have already provided the first young leaves and flowers for our salads!
It is good to know that the above flowers are included in SeeHow Volume 1 . Please keep emailing with suggestions for Volume 2.
The above Text and all Photographs are copyright of Wincenty (Wicek) Sosna. Please contact SeeHow for permission to reproduce in any way, in part or as the complete text.