National Gardening Week 2023

 It's National Gardening week this week, the first week of May, to celebrate I've said I'll post here daily about something to do with gardening and share it on social media. The themes suggested are create a coronation container, get planting and devise jubilant planting schemes. I have bought some plants to gee up the planter in the road, but tonight I'm going to get into the back garden.

My garden is particularly inspiring at the moment with various plants bought over the years looking really good just now. I tend to like a particular species of plant and buy different varieties of it. Primroses are a case in point, I have masses of different varieties of primroses, but they are feeling a bit like the stars of April, and I have featured them so today I'm going to share my passion for Geums. Geums are just coming into flower at the moment, they are hardy perennials with slug resistant leaves. I could only find 3 varieties tonight, I'm sure there are more. Here they are:

Above a very bright double flowered one called Geum Prinses Juliana bought at Quenington Rare Plant Fair in 2021

This one is a semi wild variety called Geum Bell Bank, it can be split very readily and is gorgeous, bought from Hardy's Cottage plants in 2020.

And for the moment, last but not least: Totally Tangerine a really long flowering Geum given to me by my friend Lyn.

As postscript to this post, I went out this morning looking for more Geums and also had a look through the book where I write down all plant purchases and found that I had bought 3 Geums last year, I found G Lisanne Yellow bought form Avondale Nursery at Kingston Bagpuize Rare Plant Fair last year. I also bought G. Alabama Slammer and G. Can Can. I have located the plants but they are not flowering yet.