‘June brings tulips, lilies, roses, fills the children’s hands with posies...’– Sara Coleridge
A warm and sunny patch in the garden that is not serving any other purpose will make a great place to plant up to attract pollinators. Filled with Salvia, Verbena, Geranium, Allium, Thyme, the choice is yours from a host of plants that attract the honeybees and the entertaining hover flies.
But while these insects are generally what we think of as pollinators, there are over 1,500 species in the UK and the relationship between insects and flowers date back millions of years. A tumbling flower beetle found trapped in amber dates back 99 million years to the Cretaceous period. June signals the beginning of summer and with the frosts passed, other bedding can be planted out, containers and hanging baskets filled with your favourites, and annual seeds sown for swathes of colour.
Tender plants, dahlias, salvia, begonia and more can be placed in their flowering positions while lilies in pots will give you instant displays on the patio. A few maintenance jobs need doing, such as lifting and dividing overcrowded bulbs, staking tall perennials and tying in and training clematis and honeysuckle; and weeding, as always. But mostly it’s a time to enjoy what you have planted and contemplate what the garden could look like next year.
Sowing perennial seeds such as lupins, delphiniums, hollyhocks, aquilegias and oriental poppies can be done now in a nursery bed and planted out in the autumn for next year’s cottage garden if that’s your fancy.
- Train roses and vines
- Trim hedges
- Divide auriculas, arabis and perennial candytuft
- Cut back bulb foliage when it’s died down
- Stake tall perennials
- Pinch out Fuchsia tips to encourage growth
- Sow Brompton stocks and forget-me-nots, wallflowers, Iceland poppies and Sweet Williams
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