#SixOnSaturday- Visitor's Favourites

 Last Sunday, I opened my garden for charity, one of 11 gardens open in Old Town Open Gardens 2022. We raised £1925-40 through ticket sales, afternoon teas and plant sales, it was a lovely afternoon with lots of appreciative visitors. For my six this week, I thought I'd choose some of the plants which were the visitors' favourites. There was one plant which is still looking amazingly good considering the heatwave, and was the favourite plant of most visitors:

It's Campanula 'Loddon Anna', it grows to 1.5m and mine is at least that, it flowers for at least 4 weeks and therefore if you have neutral to alkaline soil, then get one and stick it near the back of the border. It's an absolute 'wow' plant. As you can probably see, it's been subject to less than subtle staking, or 'trussing up' as more than one visitor described my staking attempts.

Number 2 favourite was this one:

It's Verbena hastata in case you can't really tell. A very vigorous plant when it gets going, and very floriferous as well. It hasn't self seeded much yet, but I'll encourage it to do so.

The third most talked about flower was this Eryngium, bought from Miserden House nursery a couple of years ago, it's a very bright blue

The next three are my choices, the first Echinacea pallida is a delightful plant, like all Echinacea in my garden, struggles to survive. I think they get eaten by slugs and maybe conditions aren't favourable. I tried growing one in a tub with other things, this worked for a year, but I discovered it this year, eaten off to the roots by slugs. So this is a bit of a miracle for me, it's in a border and has managed to flower. Maybe I should get lots more and they might succeed?

My next choice is another miracle, I collected Agave seeds from Ventnor Botanic Gardens in May, sowed them on my return and here they are, just about visible in the seed tray below

My final choice is the 'bee fest' around the Allium sphaerocephalon, growing really well this year

So there are my six, I'll head over to The Propagator now and see what he has chosen. Why not join in if you like gardening? Not much gardening in the week ahead, hope the plants survive Monday and Tuesday